


The Storm

by Mr_H_Pickles



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Explicit Language, Friendship, Gen, Medieval, Original Character(s), Supernatural Elements, Survival
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-14 04:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 72,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28914975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mr_H_Pickles/pseuds/Mr_H_Pickles
Summary: While on a holiday with his old school friends, university student Mark Harding finds himself washed up on a strange island with no idea how he got there or how to leave. He is forced to mature and learn more about himself than he ever imagined as he struggles to survive. Rated mature for language and some gory moments.
Kudos: 1





	1. The First Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is an in progress story that I've got going on over on Fanfiction.net. I've heard good things about this site though so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Thanks for taking the time out to read it and I hope you enjoy!

**Prologue: Kings of the World**

**Early evening, 15 th June**

“Here’s to being the kings of the motherfucking world!” Tom yelled as we cheered and shoved our flimsy plastic shot cups into each other’s, splashing some of the colourless drink out of the top and over our hands. Tom looked over in my direction. “Oh, sorry Mark. Kings _and_ queens.” He sniggered and we all downed our drinks, cringing as the vile sambuca washed down our throats. We turned up the music as far as it could go, completely downing out our voices. That didn’t matter, we were too pissed to care. The sun was setting, the night had just begun, and we’d already been drinking for four hours. Tom clambered up the chrome ladder to the roof and, with his arms outstretched, shouted, “I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing and I’m fucking loving it!” as we all watched in hysterics.

This wasn’t exactly what my parents had in mind when I suggested taking their yacht out for a month with my mates. It had taken the better part of a year of convincing to get to a point where we could break their trust like this. It was hard to care though; we were all twenty-years-old and having the time of our lives. The yacht wasn’t huge, containing only a few decks and a relatively small engine; I didn’t think it was anything too fancy but it more than suited our purposes. In reality, we were incredibly lucky people, I just didn’t appreciate my lifestyle nearly as much as I should have.

“You look like you need another drink, mate!” I shouted up at Tom, barely above the music’s volume, while walking towards the door to the interior of the boat.

“Too bloody right I do!” He shouted back.

I returned a couple of minutes later, four bottles of cheap lager in hand, to find Sam turning the music down and David using his phone to film Tom above me. He’d whipped his shirt off and, without a moment’s notice, was charging towards the portside edge shouting ‘cannonball’ at the top of his voice. He leapt off the side of the pure white roof and curled himself into a ball in mid-air. After a few surprisingly graceful seconds of plummeting, he narrowly missed the metal railing on the wooden lower deck and hit the sea, showering the rest of us in seawater. I quickly had to turn my back to the torrent to save the open beers in my hands. In hindsight, what Tom did was incredibly dumb, but we found it absolutely hilarious at the time.

Despite being plastered, Tom swam over to the ladder at the back and climbed up no problem. He sauntered over, took a bottle from my hand, took a swig and said, “Who’s next then? David?”

“No fucking way, that looks dangerous. Do you have any idea how many chicks would give up on life if something happened to me?” David semi-sarcastically responded,

“Your mum?” Tom quickly replied, met with laughter from everyone but a frowning David. “Alright, his Royal-Fucking-Highness here is pussying out. How about it, Mark?”

“Sorry mate, David’s mum would miss me too much,” I joked as I gave a bottle to Sam, “I’m sure Sam will have a go though. You did high jumping or something, right?”

“How about just a plain no?” He said before taking a drink. “Because I’m not a moron.”

“I’ll drink to that!” David shouted, swiping his beer from my hand and raising it to the sky. “To not being fucking twats!” We all cheered and raised our bottles high.

It was with these three people that I shared the month-long ocean-going piss-up. I’d known Tom and David since primary school. When we all went to separate universities, we vowed to stay in touch and get smashed together at least once every time we were all back home. Other friends from our school years joined for most of them as well but us three went every single time. We’d managed to stick to this for two years so far.

Tom was the loud one, that one friend who goes ballistic every time they touch a drop of alcohol. He was a good laugh though and always up for whatever we had planned. My parents were friends with his parents so we had gotten pretty close over the years and I would argue that he was my closest friend.

David was something of a poser, he fancied himself to be pretty suave and was generally not willing to upset his image at all, even on a boat in the middle of the bloody ocean. He was good fun once you got him out of his shell though. He had been putting the whole trip up on every social media imaginable every time we got a hint of Wi-Fi. Thankfully, this wasn’t often and we generally tried to ruin his pictures in one way or another; somewhere on his phone is a picture of him with the sun setting over the beautiful Spanish coast in the background and just in front of it is me giving the camera the middle finger while surfing a hunched over Tom shortly before collapsing into a heap on the deck. David wasn’t nearly as happy with that picture as we were.

Lastly, there was Sam; I met him at university when we were put in the same first year flat. We really got along and so stuck together afterwards. Turned out he came from a similar part of London to the rest of us so he started to come along to our holiday bashes and became a part of the group. He still wasn’t hugely comfortable with everyone and so tended to be more reserved, but he was still a lot of fun and certainly had let himself go a bit crazier over this trip.

I had also tried to convince the others to let me bring my girlfriend, Lucy, but Tom insisted this was going to be a ‘lads' holiday’ and that she would therefore upset the balance. I was pretty sure that the real reason was that none of the others had girlfriends, David’s explanation being that he ‘didn’t want to be tied down to one girl.’

Lucy and I had been going out for nearly two years by this point and I missed her a lot, despite knowing that I’d see her in a few weeks anyway. Whenever David was Instragramming, I was usually either texting or calling Lucy over Wi-Fi to get a sense of comfort.

We had been anchored up fairly far off the coast of Ibiza for a few days now doing very little but spending alternate days drinking and recovering. It was a painful cycle but a fun one nevertheless. All we could remember was generally just the odd game of beer pong or Ring of Fire and every horrible morning of recovery. Except for Sam; we had no idea how, but he always remembered everything that happened and rarely had more than a mild headache from a hangover. Despite being the smallest, he seemed to be a serious heavyweight when it came to drinking; it was very frustrating for the rest of us.

This was going to be the last night that we were staying offshore before moving to Ibiza itself – to join the rest of our generation and get pissed in the island’s clubs instead – so we thought we’d best make it a big one.

* * *

**Chapter One: The First Day**

**Mid-Morning, 16 th June**

Pain surged through my body. My head throbbed and every joint ached and pulsed. I could feel the heat of the sun beating down on my back and struggled to open my eyes. I was used to feeling shit on this holiday, but this was much worse than normal. The lack of the boat’s gentle rocking worried me, but I just figured that I was just still slightly drunk from the night before and so was imagining things. Considering the rest of the trip’s mornings, it wasn’t much of a stretch.

I inched open my eyes to try and have a look at where on the boat I’d ended up. I couldn’t focus my vision at all, but could make out the beige and green colours on the floor and the perfect blue of the sky. I definitely wasn’t on the boat anymore.

As my senses came back to me, I could feel my soaked clothes clinging to me while I lay face down in sand. Small waves were gently crashing behind me and the wind was rustling the leaves of nearby trees. My stomach was empty, my throat was completely dry, and I was aching all over. I raised my head and tried to focus my sight. With great effort, I managed to focus my vision and make out more of the landscape. It was beautiful; just past the short sandy beach I found myself on was lush green grass, rolling hills, and a small but beautiful cascading waterfall. It was more tropical than the Mediterranean landscape I was used to, with some oddly present oak trees added in.

Mustering as much strength as I could, I gracelessly forced myself over onto my back, groaning and swearing under my breath as I did. This let me take in the open air and think about what I was going to do. Somewhat convinced that this was a ‘hilarious’ joke played on me by my friends, I looked towards the sea expecting to see the yacht anchored not far away. Nothing. No boats, not even any other land to be seen.

I lay there for what felt like a few minutes but was probably more like an hour. I had no idea what had happened; the thought that I could actually be stranded on this island briefly crossed my mind, but I pushed it away in favour of optimistic denial.

After a long time of staring absentmindedly up into the sky, I decided that I should try and find water of some description, my thinking being that it would at least help me pass the time until my friends came back to pick me up.

Planting my hands on the floor, I pushed myself to sit up. As I slid my legs back, I felt a powerful throbbing pain in my left leg. A check of my lower leg revealed a massive laceration down the side of it; it had bled profusely all over the rest of my leg but had clearly been there for a while as the blood had clotted. Touching it hurt like nothing I’d ever experienced before in my life but, unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot I could do about it at this point.

There was nothing majorly wrong with the rest of my body, a lot of minor cuts and bruises but the one leg meant they felt relatively insignificant. Trying to minimise the use of that leg, I slowly and carefully stood up, putting most of my weight on my right leg rather than my left.

Once I had stood up, I took a good look at my surroundings. It was about midday at this point, so the sun was beaming down all over the landscape before me. The grass was bright green and the water was glistening a pure blue. Everything seemed eternally peaceful. I figured a good move would be to find some fresh water and the best place to look for that would be the bottom of the nearby waterfall. Moving was going to take a great deal of effort, however. I limped and stumbled my way across to the nearest tree to steady myself then moved onto the next one. A few trees and about 10 minutes later I had made it to the stream the waterfall ran into. I collapsed next to it, bringing immense pain to my leg despite trying to put more weight on the good one.

The water was astonishingly clear; I could see right to the rocky bed of the stream with ease. It was an absolutely amazing sight when I was used to the murky waters of the Thames back home. Trying to ignore my never ending pain, I put my face next to the water, made a bowl shape with my hands and lifted handfuls of water up to my face, drinking some and splashing others over my face as fast as my arms would let me, which turned out to not be particularly fast. The feeling of rehydration was incredible, at least compared to the rest of the day’s events so far.

I indulged myself for a few minutes before I looked up and spotted an apple falling from a faraway oak tree. This was a weird place. I didn’t particularly care or even think of the possibility that these apples could in some way be dangerous seeming as these trees seemed very unnaturally placed. I pulled myself up and stumbled to the nearest tree a few feet away. Sure enough, when I looked up there were, inexplicably, apples hanging from the branches. They were as ripe and bright red as you could find in a supermarket back home. Unfortunately, they were too high up for me to reach and I couldn’t climb the tree with my leg in the condition it was, so I gripped one of the lower branches and shook it as hard and fast as I possibly could; which in my current state wasn’t particularly hard or fast. A number of apples were dislodged and fell to the ground; I scrabbled around on the floor as best as I could to get a few of these, hastily devouring a couple of them right down to the core and putting two more in my sodden pockets.

My hunger and thirst somewhat satisfied for the moment, I pulled myself back to the tree so I could sit down underneath and use it as shade from the sun. I hadn’t realised how much energy I was using by just moving. I exhaustedly sat with my back resting on the tree for a while and tried to figure out what to do about my leg. I had done basic first aid with the Scouts but that was years ago, I couldn’t remember a thing. I figured that I should try to wash and bandage it.

Using the tree for balance, I picked myself up and limped back to the stream where I sat back down and put my leg close to the water. I leant over, slowly and painfully lifted my trouser leg up past the gash, then splashed some water over it and tried to rub some of the dirt out of the wound that had gathered. The blood washing off the wound tainted the flowing water as the dark red spread across the stream. I had to fight through the pain caused just by touching the wound, wincing as I went. This took a lot longer than it probably should have but that pain was intense, I couldn’t wash it for long at a time before having to stop for breaks.

After about five minutes of this, I was fairly satisfied – and sick of the pain – so I ripped off a few very uneven strips of my shirt to use as makeshift bandages, quickly washed them in an untainted section of the water slightly upstream and gently wrapped them around my leg. Once I had that bandaged to the best of my ability, I slowly lowered my trouser leg over the wound.

I started to realise the situation that I was in. The sun was getting ever lower and, while I didn’t want to admit it, I had to find shelter for the night since the temperature could potentially drop sharply; I felt like I had to play it safe. It dawned on me that my first year’s accommodation at university might not be the worst place I was ever going to live in.

Sitting back to rest against the tree, I scanned the surroundings. Nothing immediately leapt out at me as an obvious place to shelter. I was pretty disheartened; I didn’t know the first thing about building a shelter and was in no state to do so regardless. However, after a long period of staring into the distance in disbelief, I spotted what looked like a cave hidden behind the leaves on a low hanging branch of a tree. It was on the other side of the stream but a fair distance away in the side of one of the larger hill peaks in the area. I had no idea how big it was or if it would even be suitable at all as a shelter, but I had to go for it; there weren’t enough hours left in the day to look for anywhere else.

I carefully pushed myself upright and started to cross the stream. While not being a large stream, I spent a long time doing this just to make sure I didn’t slip and damage myself further; I had enough problems as it was. I eventually negotiated the stream and made my way to the cave opening. Moving the low hanging branch out of the way revealed a small alcove, no more than 15-foot-deep and 10-foot-wide. It would do for the night at least, a place to sleep and to try to think of some way out of this mess. The branch’s leaves covering my new home would also provide some sort of paltry defence if any harsh winds picked up.

As I moved in, I let the branch fling back to cover the entrance, sat down against one of the alcove’s walls and had my pathetic dinner of two now soggy and disgusting apples. They would at least stave off my hunger for a while. Afterwards, I sat there motionless for ages. I wasn’t sure for how long, but the sun had nearly completely set afterwards.

I just thought over the whole situation I was in. I had no idea what had happened or how to get out of it. Were my friends still on the boat or were they in the same situation somewhere on this island? To keep myself sane, I decided that I’d fallen overboard and they were currently looking for me. It helped for a few precious moments until my thoughts drifted to Lucy and my family. What if I never saw them again? It was a horrible thought. As a tear found a path down my cheek, I tried to convince myself once more that I would be back on the yacht soon. I wasn’t entirely successful as thoughts of being stranded forever preyed on my mind. It was futile to hold back my useless blubbering and muttered swear words. I spent the rest of that evening huddled in the corner of this depressing place sobbing at the thought that I might never get back home.

The temperature dropped fairly sharply when the sun descended below the horizon. The mild breeze on my still damp clothes chilled me to my core. It was nigh-on impossible to sleep under those conditions; I just curled up as best as I could as I stared outside through the gaps in the rustling leaves and tried not to think about it.

Generally, the night outside was calm to start off with. Apart from the trees occasionally blowing in a light breeze, nothing seemed to move. That didn’t remain the case, however. Later in the night, I saw a few presumably native creatures move. I couldn’t make out what they were through the leaves though; they didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. They seemed to be tall light-green coloured beings of some kind; like they tried to camouflage themselves against their environment but completely missed the mark. I wasn’t going to go outside and see what these things were, I’d had enough trouble for one day without going out there and being savaged by these potentially dangerous native creatures. The fact that they only seemed to appear at night set off several horror movie alarm bells in my mind. I couldn’t sleep anyway so I just kept my eye on them and tried to work out what they were. Sadly, to no avail.


	2. Getting an Upgrade

**Late Morning, 17 th June**

I had managed to close my eyes for a few precious hours; once it got to the early hours of the morning, the temperature had shot up and I decided that the green horrors weren’t going to bother me.

Despite waking up much later than I had planned, I was still exhausted. I slowly and carefully stood up by using the alcove’s wall to make sure I put as little pressure on my wounded leg as possible and hobbled over to the tree branch. I cautiously lifted it up and checked outside to see if anything was still out there from last night. When I didn’t see anything, I slowly stepped out and let the branch swing back into place. My mission today was going to be to try and find a source of food; apples weren’t exactly something I could live off forever. I didn’t really have a plan for how I was going to do this though; I was about the furthest you could get from being a farmer back home so I didn’t know how to create a manageable food source or even how I could scavenge for some more substantial food. My hunting at university generally consisted of either making a trip to Lidl or getting on my phone to order a takeaway.

The absolute first thing I was going to do however was get a drink from the stream as I was absolutely parched. I started to make my way there, not really looking where I was going for concentrating on not falling over.

I’d just made it to a tree on the way when something smashed straight into it right next to my face and penetrated slightly into the bark. Shocked, I stumbled backwards but just managed to keep my balance. Looking back at the tree and the projectile that was still stuck in the trunk; it was an arrow. _An arrow?_

Thoroughly confused, I swung my head left in the direction it came from to catch a glimpse of a bright white figure standing not too far away from me just before it launched another arrow at me from its bow. It struck me in the arm and I collapsed on the floor screaming in pain and losing any sense of my surroundings. All I could do was lie on the floor screaming and swearing in agony. I tried to crawl away but my energy was draining and I couldn’t focus on anything. The next few seconds seemed to last a lifetime, everything was a blur.

I heard a shout as another arrow flew just past my head, close enough to feel it clipping my hair. I looked over towards the white figure as far as I could see with my unfocused vision to see another shape, more human looking, give the first a mighty kick which shattered it into several pieces, some of which were spontaneously set alight. The other figure leant down to pick something off the floor before moving over to me. As the adrenaline of the encounter dwindled, I was fighting a losing battle to retain my consciousness. My vision faded as the second figure knelt down next to me.

A splash of water across my face opened my eyes instantly, not that I could focus on anything in sight. I could faintly hear someone talking next to me but couldn’t make out what they were saying. They seemed to have propped me up against the tree I’d collapsed next to. I sat motionless, unable to function properly with the person still unsuccessfully trying to talk to me. After a minute or so of attempting to talk to me, they seemed to get frustrated, so they put their hand up to my face and gently slapped me a few times until I regained my focus and timidly pushed their hand away.

“Right, let’s bloody try this again.” The harsh, but well-spoken, female voice sounded slightly annoyed, tired of talking without an answer. She moved my head to face her and spoke slowly and clearly, “I need to get that arrow out of you. It’s going to hurt but it can’t stay there. Understand?” It took me a while to register what she said, but once I understood I tentatively nodded. I didn’t have the strength to do much else. “Right, great. Let’s try this.” She moved out of my eyesight. I felt her grip the arrow and feel around the wound. I winced but didn’t make a sound as she analysed the situation. Before I knew what was happening, she yanked out the arrow quickly and cleanly. I cried out in pain, hunched over and held the wound with my other hand. She soon moved back in front of me, gently patted my other shoulder and condescendingly said, “Come on brave boy, I’m going to need you to be conscious if you want to get out of here. Can you do that?” I sucked in as much air as I could and nodded again.

She moved around to my unwounded side, pulled my arm around her neck and held it in place as she wrapped her other arm around my body and hauled me up to my feet. I tried to help as best as I could but my entire existence seemed so painful that I couldn’t focus on anything, especially not coordinating my movements. Despite her protests, the woman ended up doing most of the work.

My head hung low as she carried me in a seemingly random direction and each blink seemed to transport me further into a forest. I tried to be as little dead weight as possible but didn’t help much. After a considerable amount of time, we approached a simple wooden door which she shoulder-barged open without any hesitation. This revealed a small room. While it wasn’t anything temporary, the structure was certainly improvised judging by its uneven wall shape and size. She moved me across the room and slowly dropped me onto a makeshift bed on the far side.

The woman stepped back and exhaled. “Fuck me, you’re heavy when you drop off.” She seemed to expect me to reply, I just stared blankly at the empty wooden ceiling. “Alright, let’s see what we can do about those injuries.” She pulled up a nearby wooden chair, sat next to me and started to unravel the bandage I had put on my leg.

I must have drifted off for a while because when I opened my eyes again she had nearly finished washing off the wounds and wrapping them up. She glanced up as she was finishing and said, “You awake? You know you’re going to have to talk at some point, right? Can you tell me your name?” I groaned and looked towards her. I could finally make out what she looked like. I felt as though she was in her late twenties but had aged ungracefully from a long time of surviving on this island so she looked like she could have been a few years older. Her long and unkempt brunette hair tumbled over her relatively slim and tanned face. She wore clothes that were certainly made by herself; she had fashioned some sort of overcoat out of leather which covered most of her. She also wore what appeared to be a woollen neckerchief down around her neck, I had to assume that it served some other purpose other than looking kind of cool but I couldn’t figure out what. Her dark brown eyes were looking right at me, expecting an answer.

My throat was completely dry so talking was difficult, but I cleared it as best as I could and quietly muttered, “My name’s Mark.” I coughed a little, apparently being unsuccessful in my previous efforts to clear my throat. “Mark Harding.”

She gave me a wry smile. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? I’m Kate Thompson.” She finished her bandaging and reached into her overcoat’s pocket. “You sound like you could do with some water.” She pulled out a small homemade wooden water canteen. “Drink this, it’s fresh from your favourite stream.” She smirked and handed it to me. I did as I was told and took a drink, eventually drinking the whole thing without initially realising. The feeling of the water running down my arid throat was incredible.

“Thank you, I really needed that. And thank you so much for saving me, I seriously owe you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t about to leave the first person I’ve seen in ages die on me.” She stood up and started to walk towards the door, “I need to head back out and finish up my day; you rest for a while. You look like you’ve been through a lot.” She turned around and moved towards an improvised longbow resting next to the front door. Picking it up and slinging it over her shoulder, she turned back to me and said, “We’ll have to have a proper chat later,” before leaving the building and gently closing the door.

I looked over my wounds. She’d done a very good job of cleaning and wrapping them; there wasn’t a speck of dirt or blood anywhere around them and she’d used woollen bandages that I could only assume she’d made herself to cover them.

Impressed, I turned my attention to the rest of the room; it was a simple but well-constructed building with mostly evenly sized layered wooden planks nailed together used to make up the bulk of the walls. Kate had even managed to make small square glass windows to let some light in which seemed like a nice touch. Unlit torches lined the walls, presumably to be used in the evening when natural light wouldn’t cut it. The furnishings were pretty simplistic; a couple of large chests for storage, a chair and a couple of tables, one covered in various materials such as wood, stone and some kind of metal, probably iron. In one corner of the room was a large oven which seemed to double up as a kind of smelter with what seemed almost like blacksmith’s tools strewn untidily around it. The bed I was lying on had a wooden base with a ‘mattress’ made out of wool. In one corner of the room, there was a large metal bucket with a lid on it; I could only assume it was full of drinking water from the water-stained patches of wooden flooring surrounding it.

Nothing seemed to be there that didn’t need to be, even if I didn’t understand some items’ purposes, and nothing was more lavish than necessary. Looking down, I noticed another smaller bucket on the floor, about a third full of water mixed with what I assumed was my blood. She wasted a lot of her water on me, I felt quite guilty about that despite there being a basically unlimited supply nearby. On the back wall, there was a large wooden cover over a moderately sized natural passage – perhaps a cave of some sort. Through the gaps between planks, I could only see a grey stone wall and I couldn’t work out what it was for at all. I soon stopped thinking about it however and just lay back and closed my eyes so that I could catch up on some sleep since I was in relative comfort for once.

I woke up in much greater comfort than I had fallen asleep to earlier. I opened my eyes to see Tom, David, and Sam standing over me accompanied by the familiar rocking sensation of the yacht. I was back in my bedroom on the boat. The comforting faux-wooden walls surrounded me and the few windows on one side had their Venetian blinds open, flooding the room with a bright, white light. The light hurt my eyes, but I appreciated the comfort it offered. My previous practical and dull surrounding had been replaced by the yacht’s modern and comfortable bedroom. I checked my wounds; they were both gone along with all of my more minor cuts and bruises. Confused, I quickly sat up to talk to my friends.

Tom laughed, clearly enjoying my bewilderment. “Mate, you look like death. Had a bit too much last night?”

I sat on my bed blankly staring at them for a while before explaining what had happened. I told them about waking up on the island without them, being shot with an arrow by something as yet unexplained and meeting Kate. They looked very perplexed by my story and seemed to think I was crazy. Sam explained to me that we had just gotten insanely drunk and eventually fallen asleep as normal. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened and my horrible experience must have just been a dream.

I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Fucking hell. That explains a lot.” Sam was always the one to believe about what had actually happened after all.

“Oh, by the way, there’s someone here to see you, Mark.” David looked out of the door into the bright light and beckoned for someone to come through. “Her name’s Kate, she seems pretty cool.” Kate walked through the door.

“Mark, come on. Get up. You need to eat something.” Completely baffled, I just stared at her and tried to form words; nothing was coming out of my mouth. “Hey, Mark? Wake up.” I felt something tap my shoulder. Instantly I opened my eyes and lifted my head up in shock. Kate lurched backwards, “Bloody hell, you nearly knocked me out!”

I looked around, I was back. Back in the simple wooden building on the same island I was on before, now lit up by the warm orange glow of the torches. I checked my wounds and found them back where they were before. Letting out a big sigh, I lay back down. “Fuck.”

“I thought you’d be happy to see me,” Kate said, “I even cooked you some food like the good housewife I apparently am.” She grinned and handed me a small wooden plank, acting as a plate, with two perfectly cooked pork chops on it. “I know it’s not exactly silver service, but you need to eat something.”

“Sorry, you just surprised me. Thank you,” I shyly replied as I sat up and took the food from her. She had also made some for herself and we both tucked in.

We ate in silence for a while until she began to question me. “How long have you been here? I’ve never seen anyone else here.”

“Literally just over a day.”

“Makes sense. Any clue how you got here?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“How do you have no idea? _Surely_ you were present for the event?”

I awkwardly cleared my throat and muttered “Well. I _was_ quite drunk.”

“Right. That’s no bloody help, I was hoping you might be able to tell me where the hell we are.”

“You mean _you_ don’t know?” I asked, upset that she was as clueless as I. She simply shrugged her shoulders. “How long have you been here?”

Her eyes glazed over a little as she went into thought. “What year is it?”

Hesitating slightly, surprised that this wasn’t an easy question for her to answer herself, I replied, “June 2017.”

“That would mean that I’ve been here for…” her eyes darted back and forth as she did some quick maths in her head. “About five years, I think. Give or take.”

_Five years!_ She hadn’t found a way out of this for five years. I didn’t say anything, but sat stunned at her answer.

She paused for a moment as well before she remembered something. With her mouth full of food, her eyes briefly widened and she made a sound to get my attention. Quickly swallowing her food, she indicated to the corner of the room, in which sat a severely damaged but just about intact suitcase, and said, “I found this on the beach near where I found you, figured it was yours. Hopefully you won’t have to make your own clothes for a while like I did.” As it turned out it was David’s suitcase but, fortunately, most of his clothes fit me anyway, even if I did hate wearing them. The suitcase wasn’t good news for me though, despite what Kate thought. It meant that I might not have been the only one on the yacht to suffer.

Ignoring my depressing realisation, I thanked her profusely and we sat in awkward silence for a little while until I thought to innocuously ask her how she ended up on this island all that time ago. She seemed to pause and think for some time.

“To give you the long and short of it, I was on holiday in Mallorca with…” she hesitated before shaking her hands, gesturing to ignore that bit. “No, no. I was on holiday and had rented a boat for a few hours. I was having a great time. We had dropped anchor for a bit to lounge in the sun and, for no apparent reason, this ridiculous storm came in. There was no warning at all, I couldn’t do anything about it. The boat was almost instantly capsized and I was knocked the fuck out. When I woke up, I was here.”

“You said ‘we’.” I stated unassuredly. “Who was the other?”

“Did I?” She thought for a moment. “Don’t worry about it, not worth getting into,” she quickly said as she stood up, swiped my now empty wooden ‘plate’ away from me, and turned away to put it somewhere else.

She sat back next to me and we remained in an awkward silence for a moment. She was in a fairly deep thought but clearly didn’t want to discuss what about. The storm must have been more traumatic than she was letting on.

“Your friend back at the stream came in handy by the way,” she said to break the silence. “I’ll be able to get a few of the buggers with its arrows.” I didn’t want to press the other issue any further. She clearly wasn’t comfortable talking about whatever the issue was with me. In any case, I was interested to know exactly what had shot me.

“You’re welcome? Who exactly are the ‘buggers’ that shot me?”

“Oh Jesus. You really don’t know anything about this place do you?” I just shook my head timidly. I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know now. Kate, obviously about to enter into a serious conversation, came and sat down next to me. “Right.” She thought about her next words carefully. “You’re in for a bit of a shock and you’re probably not going to want to believe me at first. You have to understand that I’m completely telling the truth; your arm is a testament to that.” She waited for a response, I nervously nodded in agreement. “I don’t know how else to describe the things that come out at night here other than… monsters.”

I gave her a look of utter confusion. “Monsters?” I replied in disbelief, thanking the Lord that I didn’t go out of my shelter the night before. I had no idea what to say; if I hadn’t encountered one myself, I would have thought she had gone insane.

“See? You don’t believe me, do you? What shot you was a human skeleton brought to life. You’ll also find zombies, giant spiders and…” She hesitated, carefully picking her words, “these silent green bastards that explode if they get too close. I guess I haven’t really had reason to come with a name for them.” She looked at me for some sort of reaction but I was absolutely speechless. It sounded like she was completely taking the piss but what she described perfectly explained what I’d seen on my first night.

I hesitated and stuttered but eventually managed to say, “And these things only come out at night?”

“Yeah. The zombies and skeletons burn up in the sunlight for some reason. This neckerchief isn’t just a fashion statement,” she lightly smirked and briefly pulled it up to show me, “I don’t want to breathe their shitty fumes in every time one of them burns up.”

“What about the other two?”

“The spiders seem to become less aggressive in the day for whatever reason. The green things are just complete bastards whatever the time. I’m not sure why they don’t seem to appear in the day since they don’t burn up, but I’m bloody glad they don’t. That is unless someone is near them, in which case they’ll stick around just to be dicks. The zombies and skeletons tend to hide under the shelter of trees in the mornings, like that arsehole that shot you, so be careful.”

This was a lot to take in, I tried to quiz her more on this subject but, unfortunately, she had few answers. She had no idea why these monsters were around in the first place or why the skeletons or zombies were set alight when exposed to sunlight. She did explain the presence of the windows and torches, however. She used the windows as a way to safely examine her surroundings before leaving, meaning she could get the jump on the monsters rather than them getting the jump on her. The torches were there as a deterrent for the monsters at night; while they weren’t killed by the torchlight, they weren’t exactly fond of it.

I sat back and tried to take in everything Kate had just told me. We sat in silence for a while, Kate trying to figure out what I was thinking and me having very few coherent thoughts anyway.

“I know it’s fucking mental and slightly terrifying,” Kate said after a short while, “But don’t worry about it for now. You’re safe here, and when the time comes that you actually have to meet these things, I’ll be there to guide you through everything.” This was actually quite reassuring, despite the fact that I didn’t exactly plan on fighting these ‘monsters’ in the first place. “Now, you sit back and rest. I’m going to get some sleep; I’ve got to bloody work for a living tomorrow.” She grinned and stood up. “You take the bed. I’ll have the chair. I won’t be far away if you need me” I thanked her profusely for everything and tried to do as she suggested. I mostly spent the night thinking over everything she had just told me though.


	3. The Learning Curve

**Sunrise, 21 st June**

“Right Mark, let’s check those wounds. Today could be the big day!” Kate had been eagerly waiting for me to get better and start collecting resources for the past few days because she wasn’t fond of collecting nearly double the resources by herself. She’d been checking the wounds on my arm and leg daily to see how quickly they had healed. The leg was probably fine the day before but she didn’t want me going out with a damaged arm. In her words, I ‘would have only been a bloody liability.’ I was ok with that; the longer I could keep away from the creatures outside, the better. My time was boring but at least it was safe. Kate was good at keeping me fed and didn’t seem to resent my presence, likely because I represented some semblance of human contact that she had sorely lacked over the past few years. She’d even let me keep the bed and had made a new one for herself.

Unfortunately, today looked like I wasn’t going to be relaxing anymore; my arm was already feeling better. Of course, I wasn’t going to admit that just in case Kate decided otherwise.

She unravelled the bandage and with a look of surprise said “Wow, I think you’re ok. You’re a bloody fast healer I’ll give you that.”

“Yeah,” I said depressively, “Unfortunately I always have been.” This had always worked out in my favour in the past, any cuts and bruises would be gone ridiculously quickly compared to everyone else. I had no idea why this was the case but I was cursing it now. I’d been left with a couple of grim scars where the wounds once were but other than that I was basically fine.

“Don’t take that attitude, you’ll finally be getting out of the house!” She seemed to wait for me to show some happiness at this. When I didn’t, she took a more serious but comforting tone. “Mark, I’ll show you everything you need to know. You’ll be fine.” Surprisingly this did actually make me feel slightly better about everything.

“Alright, thanks. I guess,” I said reluctantly.

“Good! Now get up, I’ve got a present for you.” She stepped back and revealed a rusting iron sword leaning up against the wall near her bow. When I looked slightly underwhelmed, she explained it a bit more. “Ok I’ll be honest, I didn’t make it for you; it’s my old sword. Should still help you defend yourself though.”

“You want me to attack these things with a sword? Are we living in the past?” I’d had no experience wielding a sword; obviously I’d never needed to.

“Basically, yes. When we’re trying to survive, we have to make do I’m afraid.” She slung her bow over her neck and across her body. “First things first, I’m going to check the outside’s clear. Stay put for now.” As she moved to look through the windows, I picked up the sword. It was fairly crudely made; the wooden handle had clearly seen some use and appeared to have been damaged by water and general use over its time. The blade was relatively thin and fairly short. It looked like it would have been relatively well made at first, but time had clearly taken its toll as the base was alarmingly rusty and the whole blade was worryingly blunt. I gently ran my finger down it disappointedly, it wouldn’t be able to threaten warm butter.

Kate turned back to me after confirming that it was probably safe outside and noticed my dissatisfaction. “I know it’s not much, but it’s better than nothing, right?” I reluctantly agreed and she handed me a small iron ring to attach to my trousers so that I could sheath the sword. Kate was significantly better equipped than me; she had her long bow complete with a leather quiver full of arrows, her protective leather overcoat and what looked like a relatively new and sharp iron sword, complete with a leather scabbard. At least that meant she couldn’t expect me to do much fighting.

“I’m going to head out there. I’ll call you out if it’s safe,” She instructed as she drew her sword and carefully opened the front door. She slowly walked outside, checking the space around her and keeping her sword at the ready. After a short while, she called me outside to join her. I calmly followed her, confident that she would know if something was outside.

Once I got to her, she casually pointed towards a nearby tree. I immediately panicked and drew my sword. “What the fuck is that?!” The figure was standing bolt upright under the shade of the tree. Its sickeningly green skin diverting attention from its more human features. Dried blood ran down from its jaw and from its multiple cuts and gashes around its body. Its arms stretched forwards and it stared at me with its dead eyes, lusting to attack, but intelligently knowing it couldn’t.

“That, my friend, is a zombie,” Kate said calmly, “It knows it can’t leave the shadow of the tree otherwise it’ll die. It seems like we got lucky and you can have a practice. There’s fuck all it will be able to do If you play your cards right.” Refusing to let the zombie out of my sight, I could see out of the corner of my eye that she was happily smiling at me. “Now, you don’t want to get too close to it, but you should basically be able to do what you want to the poor guy.” I tentatively started taking steps towards the creature, sword raised, expecting it to lunge forward at me at any moment. It certainly noticed me moving towards it but knew it couldn’t do anything about it. Kate moved at the same pace but a couple of steps behind, giving me advice as we went. “Just remember, it may not look like you’re hurting the thing, but you are. Just keep at it and it will eventually die.” I felt slightly better about everything with her just behind me, I was still scared shitless though. As I got within stabbing range, presumably just outside of the zombie’s attacking range, Kate stopped me. “Alright, go for it,” she muttered.

I timidly raised my sword higher, the zombie staring at me dead in the eyes the entire time. It was off-putting, to say the least. I hesitated for a few seconds, not quite believing what I was doing, until Kate gently nudged me, telling me to carry on. With all of my might, I swung the sword down towards the zombie, slashing it down its chest creating a huge cut down the middle. Blood started to pour out but the zombie was completely unfazed. It remained emotionless; the same cannot be said for me. The sight of it made me feel horrible, I had to seriously stop myself from turning away and throwing up. I held my hand over my mouth and hunched over as I desperately wretched. “See? It doesn’t give a shit,” Kate said, not noticing the state I was in. “Keep at it.”

I tried to regain my composure and pulled my sword back for a stab. Quickly lunging the sword forward, I stabbed the zombie’s stomach and pulled the sword back out immediately, paranoid that the zombie would suddenly start attacking me. Again, it barely seemed to notice the gaping wound I had left it. I must have looked disheartened because Kate said, “You’re doing well! One more hit should do it I reckon.” Reassured, but still not feeling great, I lifted the sword up and over my right shoulder. Kate moved away from me, understandably believing that there was a very real chance that the swing could go awry. I mustered all of the strength I could and swung the sword diagonally down from right to left, shouting as I went. The sword slammed into the zombie’s neck and lodged in its spine, blood shot out of it in all directions. The sudden stop shocked me and made me release my grip on the sword as the zombie collapsed into a heap on the floor. For a moment, I stared at the corpse that I had just created in an effort to make sure that it wasn’t about to come back to life and ruin my day further.

After some persuasion by Kate, I bent down slightly, grabbed the handle of the sword and pulled with all of my might, freeing the sword but also pulling the zombie towards me, partially out of the tree’s shadow and into the sunlight. It almost instantly burst into flames, throwing up smoke and kicking out a huge amount of heat. I heard Kate’s muffled voice shouting, “Get away from there!” I did as she said and quickly moved but not before I inhaled some of the smoke. The smell was repulsive and truly disgusting, the absolute worst thing I had ever smelled. It was so awful that I dropped my sword and keeled over, retching with my eyes watering. I had to really work to not throw up for a good few minutes.

It didn’t take long for the corpse to burn up completely, but the smell lingered. I crawled further away and collapsed on the floor while attempting to keep my insides inside of me.

Kate strolled over to me and lightly slapped my back, “Yeah, that’s why I have this thing.” She said, lightly tugging her neckerchief that she’d raised to cover her mouth and nose. “Good job though; I wouldn’t exactly say you’re a natural, but you’ll get there.” I looked up at her, dishevelled, as she lowered her neckerchief and gave me a small smile, “Come on, we’ve got more to do today. You’re going to get our food for the evening.”

Before we left the zombie remains, Kate quickly went back to the shelter to pick up a moderately sized leather sack to carry food in. I didn’t know exactly what ‘getting our food for the evening’ entailed though; I hadn’t once thought about how she got the food we’d been eating over the past few days. Nevertheless, once I had recovered from the zombie ordeal, Kate led me to a hill overlooking a remarkably open plain not too far away. No trees in sight, just the lush green grass blowing in the wind. It was full of somewhat small wild pigs happily frolicking in the sun, no cares in the world whatsoever. Kate spread her arms, indicating towards the plain, and happily said, “Here we are.”

I stared into the plain for a while before I realised what she wanted and looked back at her. “No,” I flatly stated.

“I’m afraid so,” she immediately replied, predicting my attitude.

“I can’t. There’s no way.” I gazed at the pigs. They looked so happy and innocent. “No.”

“If you don’t then we don’t eat tonight.” Kate suddenly sounded stricter than before.

I closed my eyes and put my hands over my face, thinking about what to do. I couldn’t find any way out of it. “Fuck,” I muttered as I opened my eyes and reluctantly walked down towards the innocent group of pigs. Neither of us said anything as we approached.

One of them calmly wandered over me and looked straight up at me. It was completely unafraid. I turned towards Kate and pleaded, “Couldn’t we spread the senseless murder out over a few days?” I was partly joking and partly hoping for the best.

She gave me a stern response. “No. You need to do this. You can’t be relying on me constantly.”

Knowing that she was right, I sighed and drew my sword. The pig remained relaxed; It just seemed to be incredibly interested in what I was doing.

Moving around to the side of it, I raised my sword so that the tip was facing directly downwards. With my other hand, I held the pig in place. It didn’t seem to mind at all; it just watched my movements with naïve interest. I glanced over to Kate who was making gestures for me to do it. With a deep breath, I forced the sword down as hard as I could. It went straight down into its neck, but I hit the side and missed anything major. The pig squealed in agony and tried to run away but Kate ran in from the side and stopped it. Blood spattered down my front and across the grass below as I tried to go for another hit. The sounds it made as I lifted my sword up were horrible, it was terrified and in complete shock. It tried its best to escape but Kate kept it still. I thrust the sword down again, this time going through the centre of its neck and killing it instantly, finally silencing its tortured cries.

I held the sword there for a moment, embedded in the pig’s neck. Staring down at what I had just done, I eventually let go of the sword, almost involuntarily, letting the pig drop on its side and taking the sword with it. I stood there for a while glaring at my work until Kate stood next to me and patted me on the shoulder, saying, “Well done. Don’t worry, it eventually gets easier.” I didn’t really listen to her, I just stared down at the mutilated innocent animal.

After a short time of silence, Kate spoke gently to me. “I’m afraid you’re really not going to like what comes next. You’re going to need your sword.” Completely silently, I walked around to the other side, knelt down, put one hand on the sword’s handle and the other on the pig’s blood-soaked body. I groaned as I tugged at the sword to pull it out of its neck. With a large amount of effort, I managed to pull the sword free causing blood to spatter across the ground next to it.

“What the fuck am I doing?” I muttered under my breath to myself in a moment of realisation. I continued to kneel next to the massacred pig for a while, sickened by myself. I looked around the plain to find that all of the other pigs were running away or watching the slaughter from afar. It may not seem like it should have been a huge deal, but actually having to murder the pig was horrible. I’d never killed anything more than a fly at home and here I was stabbing pigs through the neck. This was a horrible place.

Kate knelt so that she was on my level on the other side of the pig. “Now the really bad part,” she began. I looked away from the pig and up at her. She beckoned me over to her side of the pig; the stomach. I did as she asked but she could clearly see I was having a hard time. “I’m going to need you to… _Retrieve_ the edible parts of the pig.” She indicated towards the belly of the pig. “In fact, I do have a smaller knife you can use. Might make things easier.” She reached into the inside of her overcoat and unsheathed a small but extremely sharp and deadly looking knife, more of a dagger. The blade itself was remarkably clean but the wooden handle and leather grip looked severely bloodstained; this knife was clearly used for this often.

She handed me the knife which I extremely reluctantly took. She took me through the whole process, indicating the best parts to cut out and what I should definitely leave, but ultimately the deed had to be done by me. After the lecture, I positioned myself so that I was leaning over the remains and slowly plunged the knife in. The resistance the flesh put up was horrific and made me feel nauseous but I carried on regardless. I managed to carve out a few disgusting chunks of bloody pork and handed them to Kate who put them in her sack. I was probably incredibly wasteful but, at this point, I didn’t particularly care, I was completely disillusioned with life at that moment. After an awfully long time, I was done and feeling sickened. I dropped the knife on the floor, stood up and started to walk away.

“There’s still this…” Kate started to say before I turned around and shot her a glare of pure anger and frustration. “Never mind.” She quietly repositioned herself and cut out the final bits of pork herself while I moved away and stared into the distance at the rest of the pigs while taking in as much air as I could. This was just about the worst day I’d ever had and it was only just approaching midday.

Once Kate was done, she carefully walked over to me to try to lift up my spirits. “Your first kill is never easy, I know. I would’ve been pretty worried about you if you didn’t react like this. But either way, we have to do it if we want to survive.”

I slowly turned to look at her, about to launch into a tirade of explanations about my feelings. When I realised that she had talked about sheer survival, I stopped myself and replied apologetically. “Sorry. I’ll be fine.” I was still clearly miserable but I figured that Kate didn’t need me being a burden.

“Don’t try to cover up your reservations, I know exactly what you’re going through. When I first got here it took me nearly a week of starving myself before I managed to do it. Even then I got the tiniest amount of food from it.” Kate said with a gentle smile which I reciprocated. “Now come on, we’ve got to hurry up if we want to finish on time today.”

We moved on with my head hanging low, blood on my hands – both literally and figuratively – and tired. Kate was in a significantly better mood, as was expected, but she’d become somewhat jaded to life here over the years. We were heading more in the direction of the shelter now but stopped while we were still about a ten-minute walk away from it.

“Now you have the lovely job of collecting wood for us,” Kate instructed.

I sarcastically laughed as she opened one side of her overcoat, revealing a relatively small iron axe tied to her waist using a small hide loop around the handle. She grabbed the head and in one swift motion threw it up in front of her and caught the handle.

“This is for you.” She held it towards me and smiled. Unenthusiastically, I grabbed the axe and had a look at it. It had obviously been heavily used, the wooden handle was very weathered and splitting at some points, but the head looked to have been sharpened very recently and was generally well taken care of. It was surprisingly well made; the head wasn’t merely tied to the handle like I would have expected from a survivalist, it was cast with a hole down the centre, meaning the handle could continue up through the middle and be topped by a stopper, making it much more strongly secured in place. It probably wasn’t her first attempt at making an axe.

“Let’s get the strange bits out of the way first,” Kate began. “These trees… They don’t have any roots.” I shot her a particularly confused look. “Yeah, it’s weird; fuck knows how they stand up. It does mean, however, that you can take the whole bloody tree up pretty easily.” I really did not understand this place. It seemed to make general nods to reality while coming up with completely bizarre physics elsewhere.

Kate told me to get to chopping down a few trees in the area; she made it sound infinitely easier than it actually was. I asked her when I should finish, she gave the particularly unhelpful answer of ‘when it starts getting dark.’

She briefly came back with a clean bag to fill with logs before leaving again, saying that she was going to go and work in her mine. Initially not paying attention to that comment, I realised as soon as she’d gone that she said she had a mine. Had five years made a fully-fledged mine a necessity? It was hard to comprehend.

After not coming up with any way out of this work, I lined up the axe against a tree and swung with all of my might, making a pitifully small cut in the trunk. I felt the handle of the axe bend and deform slightly as I did so but continued on regardless. Swinging again resulted in a complete miss of the original cut making a near-identical cut a few centimetres above it. This was going to take a long time.

It took me about an hour to hack away at the tree enough for it to finally fall over. It wasn’t a huge tree so the fall wasn’t particularly dramatic. I spent an awfully long time cutting the leaves and smaller branches off the tree before I could start chopping up the trunk itself. All in all, the whole process took me far too many hours for just one tree. After chucking the chopped-up logs into the bag I lay down for a while, exhausted.

I just shut my eyes and thought about everything. I wanted desperately to go home; I wanted to turn away, say ‘fuck you’ to this island and leave it all behind. If I could get back to university I wouldn’t complain about a thing, life would be so simple in comparison. I wanted to see my friends and my family again. If I could see Lucy again I would tell her exactly how much she meant to me and I would never let her go. I missed her so much; my thoughts would drift back to her every time I got a moment vague peace and quiet.

I must have stayed with these thoughts for longer than expected. From the distance, I heard Kate shouting at me. “Mark! Get the fuck up! The bloody sun’s setting!” I immediately opened my eyes to see her run up to me. As I was clumsily standing up, she grabbed my arm and aggressively pulled me to me feet. “We’ll leave the logs here until tomorrow, let’s fucking go!” She swiped the axe from my hand and shunted me in the direction of the shelter. I followed Kate’s commands and started sprinting there as we both drew our swords, keeping an eye out for any monsters.

After a short time of running, a zombie appeared from the shadows to our right; I couldn’t maintain my pace and avoid it so I got ready to attack but, before I had a chance to even ready my sword, Kate had overtaken me and charged it, slicing down its front with one clean strike and quickly bringing her sword back up through its arm, dispatching the poor thing extraordinarily quickly. We kept running, Kate now some way behind me as she occasionally slowed to expertly dispatch a monster. I glanced back to see Kate duck under an arrow that was heading straight for her head without breaking stride, then sprinting up to the skeleton that loosed it to cut it down. It was incredible to watch but I forced myself to ignore what she was doing and keep going.

We had almost made it back when I heard Kate yelling at me, “Mark! Left! Fucking left!” I looked left and briefly saw one of the green bastards Kate told me about. It started to make a hissing sound and its skin appeared to pulse white. I just completely froze up, unable to do anything about it. It seemed moments from exploding when an arrow slammed into what I could only assume was its head, completely interrupting its apparent countdown. The creature was pushed back a couple of feet but soon regained its balance and returned to its bloodlust charge. The hiss started back up again as its eyes focused in on me and its green skin began to pulse white once more. I managed to regain the use of my legs and ran away from it as fast as I could but, despite its four stumpy legs, it was faster. The hissing got louder and its sequential footsteps grew hauntingly closer. Another arrow flew towards it, striking true in its centre mass.

It wasn’t enough. The creature was pushed back but, in its dying breath, set itself off. The explosion lit up the immediate area in a bright orange light as the immense heat passed over me. I was just far enough away for the shockwave to only make me stumble, but the heat charred my clothes and gave my back some relatively light burns. Dirt from the once flat ground was thrown across the landscape and pelted me, but I kept running towards the shelter, the adrenaline helping me to ignore any pain.

I looked over towards Kate who was aiming her bow at the space the monster had once taken and shouting, “Get to the fucking house!”

It was a short distance to the shelter from there, but monsters seemed to be coming out of every corner now. I could see the warm orange glow of the torches bursting through the windows of the shelter; the safety beckoned. I had my sights set on the door that Kate had left slightly ajar.

Noticing movement up high, I glanced upwards and just about caught sight of a huge spider that was about twice my size dropping down on me from on top of the shelter. I Panicked and jumped out of the way as I wildly swung my sword. One of my manic flails managed to cut through one of the spider’s enormous legs as it was descending, giving me just about enough time to barge through the front door and collapse on the floor in the process, my arm narrowly missing the blade of my own sword. I turned to face the door as soon as possible and saw the spider, now more angry than hindered by its missing leg, trying to find its way through a front door much too narrow for it to fit through. I watched in terror, horrified that it would manage to get through until Kate gave it a powerful kick to its side and stabbed the beast straight through its head, instantly killing it. She bolted through the door and slammed it shut, nearly shaking it out of its frame.

We stayed nearly motionless; me on the floor a few feet from the door and Kate leaning against a wall next to the door, both of us gasping and wheezing. We didn’t have the energy to move for some time. Hearing the monsters outside attempting to find a way in was disconcerting but we ignored it and tried to catch our breath. Our silence was eventually broken by Kate, still having to take heavy breaths between most of her words.

“Mark. What the fuck was that?” I didn’t have a response; I was too tired for my brain to function properly and I just didn’t know what I could say. As she slowly regained her breath she began to shout. “You would have fucking died out there had I not come out to get your sorry arse!” She took a deep breath. “We could have _both_ died out there because of you!” She moved so that she was towering over me. She could be very intimidating when she wanted to be. “You were just daydreaming out there were you? Enjoying your time in the fucking sun?” Making wild hand gestures, she started to angrily pace the room, “This isn’t school anymore, Mark. You can’t just take a bloody nap whenever you feel like it! This is serious, but you don’t seem to realise it! You need to get your fucking act together! You know where this shit gets us? Stuck in a crowded hut with no bloody resources, that’s where!” She continued like this for about ten minutes. It was horrible, I felt horrible. She’d put some trust in me and I completely let her down; nearly getting us killed. I was running through excuses in my head but I came up completely blank, there was no reason I could explain to her that would make it ok. I wasn’t sure that being depressed about the situation I was in would be a good excuse for her. I just lay on the floor and took the well-deserved abuse. After a while, her voice calmed a bit and she solemnly said, “Are you even listening to me?”

I sat up and quickly said, “Yes. I’m so sorry. Words can’t describe how much of a dick I feel right now.” I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make things right but I tried to give it a shot at least.

“No,” Kate said, followed by a long pause. “You’re not a dick. I know you’re not used to this, but you just can’t do that. If you keep making mistakes this island _will_ kill you, and I don’t want that to happen. I’m enjoying having company for once. Even if my company is a bit dim.” She gave me a quick teary-eyed, weak smile and moved closer to me before returning to her serious words. “I know it’s hard, but you really have to understand the dangers of this place if you want to live. Sorry for shouting, but this is really important.” I knew I’d be able to regain her trust if I tried harder in the future. I made sure to thank her for saving me again about three times in the past half hour.

We cooked and ate in relative silence that evening. I still felt guilty about butchering and eating that pig but I wasn’t about to mention it to her now. She eventually managed to compose herself after eating and started to ask me questions about my life back home, likely out of boredom. I told her about my fairly well-off London-born family and the friends that I had lost on my family’s yacht, at the mention of which she half-jokingly called me a ‘posh twat’. I also told her an awful lot about Lucy. I may have rambled on a bit but it felt good to vent about everything; I was miserable and I needed to talk to someone about it. Not that anything could be done but it just made me feel slightly better about everything. Kate was surprisingly good at listening to my venting despite today’s events. Once I was done moaning, I got around to asking her about her life at home.

She thought for a while, clearly choosing her words carefully. It didn’t seem as though she liked talking about her past too much. “I’m from Gloucestershire originally, from a family of four. We lived in a pretty nice house on a farm, although it probably would have been a fucking shed compared to your swanky bloody house. I didn’t really enjoy farming though, so I moved down to Oxford when I was 20 and had A-Levels under my belt. I ended up taking a job at a local pub to pay my way; there I met…” She hesitated, uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “I met my husband.”

 _Fuck,_ I thought to myself, not prepared for that answer. I was just idly asking questions to pass the time, I didn’t intend to bring up a husband she probably wouldn’t have seen since she arrived on the island. I didn’t quite know how to deal with her suddenly being open and vulnerable. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,” I said, not being able to think of anything else.

“No. It’s fine.” She replied, staring into space. “I just miss him. I really miss him. I wish I could just be back at home with him.” I felt bad for moaning about my troubles, they seemed pretty insignificant since I’d only been on the island for just under a week. “Sorry, I’m still supposed to be mad at you.” She said with a small nervous laugh.

“Just call me a twat and you’ll feel better,” I said with a smile.

“Alright, will do.” She smiled back at me before standing up, “We should probably get some sleep. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.” I let out a nervous chuckle as she said that. I was very worried by what she meant.

I nervously questioned her, “Big day?”

“You’ll find out tomorrow, you twat.” She sniggered and began to get ready to sleep as I did the same.


	4. Discovery

**Sunrise, 22 nd June**

I dreamt about Lucy again that night. Nearly every time I closed my eyes, I was transported back home once more. I was happy there. Lucy was with me and everything was back to the way it should be. It was as if I’d never left for that stupid bloody holiday. It was the same dream every time as well, though I never felt any familiarity at the time.

We’d be at my university house sitting on the sofa in my small, drab, but oddly comforting living room in front of the television. Whatever we were watching was never important to me, I just enjoyed being there; her head resting on my shoulder, her long, straight blonde hair draped down my arm as we both stared out of the window at the storm outside. We could see bright bolts of lightning and hear the crashes of thunder; being inside while this was all going on was comforting in a way. I’d always loved storms, there was something beautiful in their raw power; I would always be able to watch them for hours. The rain was pounding against the building but we didn’t care, we were safe inside. The warmth of her body against mine was all I needed. It was perfect.

Then I would wake up in a hastily made and uncomfortable bed on an island that’s constantly trying to get me killed in a variety of ways and accompanied by a woman who likely didn’t trust me anymore because I’d royally fucked up the day before. The horrible monsters making disgusting sounds outside were slowly becoming as familiar as my own heartbeat. The word ‘depressed’ didn’t quite cut it for representing my feelings that morning. The only thing keeping me going was the blind hope that I’d be able to go back home some time soon.

I made sure to wake up early. I knew I’d have to go and collect the wood I had left out in the open the day before and I wanted to start to make amends with Kate. Previously I’d relied on Kate to wake me up on time (me being used to waking up basically whenever I wanted to at home) but from this day I was going to try to be better at this. Kate seemed at least somewhat impressed, even going so far as to say that maybe I wasn’t such a ‘lazy bastard’ after all.

I went out by myself since I was just carrying logs back in the daylight so there shouldn’t have been too much trouble. I did encounter another zombie hiding underneath a tree, but I thought I’d just leave him be. We weren’t causing each other any trouble.

After getting slightly lost along the way – only managing to find my way there because of the crater that the exploding monster had made – I eventually made it to the sack full of the logs I’d chopped up the previous day. The logs themselves seemed oddly light, so I managed to swing the sack over my shoulder and carry them back without a huge amount of trouble. The whole thing was heavy, but not nearly as heavy as I expected it to be. I convinced myself that my few days I’d spent at the gym that one January straight after New Year were the reason I found it ok, but it was more likely because the trees on this island were just really strange.

I got back to the shelter about three-quarters of an hour after I left. As I accidentally slammed the door against the wall and clumsily hauled the sack of logs through the front door, I noticed the thick wooden panel on the back wall had been moved to the side to reveal a narrow but extremely long passage down. I had no idea where it led but I figured it had something to do with the ‘big day’ Kate had planned for me. I dumped the logs off in a corner of the shelter and had a peek into the stairwell. The cave wasn’t huge but seemed to go down a long way. Kate had lit up the walls with torch sconces to provide a good amount of light and had also carved out some form of steps in the rock to make the descent easier. I had started to walk down them, knowing that I’d regret it when I had to go back up them later, when Kate shouted up at me from further within.

“Hey! Is that you, Mark?” She asked, having heard me noisily moving the logs around upstairs.

“Nope, I’m a zombie. Just thought I’d pop down here for some breakfast.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” She replied with huge amounts of sarcasm. “Now get down here; I’ve got an exciting day planned for you!”

I did as I was told and walked down the rest of the hundred or so stone steps. They looked like they had been painstakingly carved out of the naturally occurring stone; there were imperfections here and there but in general they were very well carved, if a bit steep. The centre of each step had become smooth and sloped from heavy use though, meaning that I nearly came tumbling down them on multiple occasions.

Reaching the bottom of the steps revealed a small opening in the cave. Kate had covered off the rest of the apparently expansive cave with a solid wooden wall and placed an imposing iron door in its centre. Through the bars in its window about halfway up, I could see that the dark cave continued much, much further. This all must have taken an awfully long time to make. In the room, there were multiple wooden storage containers dotted around the edges as well as a workbench of sorts that appeared to be used for making her tools. On the walls, there were tool racks with pickaxes and shovels, all with various levels of use and in no particular order.

When I came down, Kate was rifling through one of the storage containers.

“Did you get the logs?” She said without even glancing at me

“Hello to you too.” I thought I was being funny, Kate shot me a look that told me otherwise. “Yeah, it was no problem. They’re all up top.”

“Good, could you fetch me a small one?”

I stopped in place for a moment with a face like thunder. “You’re joking.”

“No… I need to make a new handle for this pickaxe.” She picked up an old iron pickaxe from the floor next to her. The head was basically fine, nothing more than a few dents and scratches, but the wooden handle had been used so much that it had bent out of shape and looked as though one more use would cause it to snap completely.

I sighed and very begrudgingly turned around to walk out and back up to the surface. As I did so, I started half-sarcastically moaning a bit. “You couldn’t have told me when I was only halfway down the stairs, could you? Nope! You had to wait until I was all the way at the bottom!”

From the bottom of the passage, Kate shouted back, “Calm your tits, a bit of exercise will do your fat arse some good!” I ignored that comment and carried on. The climb back up was, as suspected, agonising. I considered myself reasonably fit, but this was a trial. I had no idea how Kate managed to use this on a regular basis without wanting to kill herself.

It took a long time but, eventually, I managed to reach the top, collect a solitary log, and stumble back down the steps. Exhausted, I handed her the log and she began chopping and sanding it down to make a handle for the old pickaxe head. I wasn’t focusing on her process at the all because I was shattered. Thankfully, this took a fair amount of time meaning I could sit in the corner and recover from the trial I had just undergone.

Once she was done, Kate looked back at me and said, “Come on, Mark! You’re supposed to be youthful and energetic!”

I looked up at her with a distressed face and just said, “No,” while dramatically exhaling.

“Kids these days, huh? Don’t know they’re born.”

I chuckled and allowed Kate to pull me to my feet so that she could reveal her plan.

“I’ve got an exciting day for you. We’re going to have a wonderful day of mining!” Kate said, trying to sound as excited as she could. I stared at her for a while in disbelief. Over the past few days, I never would have guessed that mining of all things would be integral to our survival. She seemed to be able to sense this dissatisfaction and so said, “I know it’s not terribly fun or exciting, but you can actually find some really cool stuff down here. Give me a second, I’ll show you.” She eagerly darted off to a container that was separated from the others. Out of it, she pulled a small box – no bigger than ten inches across and five inches tall – and lifted it up to show me. “In this are honestly the most beautiful things I have ever seen. I’m not even sure what they are really; they look a bit like diamonds but they seem even more special than that for some reason. If you see these and still tell me that you’re not in the slightest bit interested in this mine, then I will be truly amazed.”

She slowly lifted the lid off the box. As I disinterestedly glanced in its direction, I caught a glimpse of a bright blue light flooding out that completely obscured the objects inside. As she opened it further the light exploded out, blinding me instantly. Bolts of agonising pain shot through me. I held my head and keeled over trying to numb the pain as best as I could. Letting out a tortured scream, I stumbled around the room not being able to see nor hear anything of the world around me.

After about a minute of excruciating pain, I heard the crash of thunder and I was transported to a completely different world. The pain was unrelenting as I observed the flesh-coloured landscape around me. Was is really human tissue? It certainly looked that way but I couldn’t be sure.

I fell to my knees on a small hill made of the disgusting surface, surrounded by an expansive lake of lava. The space was completely enclosed but lava was falling from the ceiling and completely cutting me off.

I didn’t notice it at first, but there was a large ornamental shield propped up on the floor about twenty feet in front of me. The intricate engravings across its face surrounded a central boss that glowed a bright blue, similar to whatever was in Kate’s box. Despite the agony, I felt compelled to move towards it.

My joints were seized, but I forced my hands to the soft ground. Each moment was torture as I pushed one hand forward and followed it with a leg to inch ever closer to the shield. As I pushed forward with gritted teeth, trying to keep the pained screams inside, I tried to focus on what was causing the agony. It felt endless yet implacable and vague.

It felt like an eternity, but I reached the shield and stretched my hand towards it. A single touch caused everything to halt. The pain finally ended, the lava stopped in place, and the blue of the shield stopped glowing. After catching my breath, I stumbled to my feet. Feeling that there was nothing better to do, I grabbed the shield in front of me with both hands.

My vision returned as I was hurtling towards a stone wall. I hit it with incredible force and slumped to the floor in agony. I was in a huge amount of pain; my head had a colossal throbbing ache surging through it and I had an intense ringing sensation in my ears meaning I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t do anything but cry out in pain as Kate ran up to me and tried to help. She looked terrified and was desperately trying to talk to me, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

After giving up on trying to talk to me she hauled me up, causing me immense pain, and started to lug me up the extensive passage to the shelter. I couldn’t even try to help her climb up; I could barely focus on what was happening to me at all. She moved up the stairs surprisingly fast but, even so, it took a long time to climb up the whole way. Once she’d brought me all the way up, she gently dropped me on my bed and sat down next to me absolutely drained. My hearing slowly came back to me on the ascent, but I was still completely dazed and basically unable to function. My head still felt like it was in pieces and my entire body ached. Kate tried to ask me what had happened, but I was completely unable to answer her. She rushed over to her water bucket, filled up her wooden canteen and brought it back to me. Lifting it up to my mouth, she let me take a drink of the refreshing water. This was the first time I’d seen her genuinely panicked; she was rushing around talking about everything and nothing, barely making any sense, trying to find anything that would help me, sadly to no avail.

After about 10 minutes of this, she defeatedly slumped down on the chair next to me.

“I’m so sorry, Mark. I had no idea. I don’t know what happened.” Remorse flowed through her words as she stuttered and hesitated throughout her sentences. “I honestly thought they just looked cool. I don’t know why that happened.” She sat completely motionless for a while, deep in thought. She was making a hard decision. “I know I shouldn’t leave you like this, I don’t want to at all, but I have to get us some resources otherwise we’re not eating tonight.” She had become very sombre and sounded endlessly regretful. “Just hang in there and I’ll be back soon.” She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes for a while hoping for a response. When I didn’t give her one, she hung her head, slowly collected her gear, and left.

I was left by myself and scared. I didn’t know what this whole thing meant. _Was it a vision of some kind? Was I actually there?_ I couldn’t work out what had happened or if the place was even real. I replayed it in my head over and over again to try and understand everything, but I’d never heard of anything in the world causing something like that to happen. _What on earth had Kate discovered?_

It took Kate a few hours to get back, during which time I could only think about the vision. I was regrettably no more knowledgeable about what it meant than I had been as it happened. I was in significantly less pain than before however and I felt able to finally talk. I looked over to her as she walked through the door holding a sack of food and said, “You were right, those are some pretty special diamonds.” She dropped everything she was holding, rushed over and sat down next to me.

“Jesus, Mark! Are you ok?”

“I’ll be honest, I’ve been better.”

“What the fuck happened to you?” I explained the whole vision; the shield, the landscape, the pain. Everything. As I explained further, I began to entertain the idea that it was completely nonsensical. It made less sense the more I thought about it.

After I’d told her all I knew, she told me her side of the story.

According to her, as soon as I saw the diamonds my eyes turned completely blue and I stumbled away. I then hunched over and held my head as I screamed and shouted in pain. Once Kate put the lid back on the box of diamonds, about to put it down and try to help me, I stood up completely still and stared at the box. When the box moved, my head moved with it but my eyes stayed central in their sockets; I was completely transfixed. After a couple of minutes of this, a burst of electricity shot around me and I was thrown back against the wall. She said it was like nothing she’d ever seen before. When she looked at the diamonds nothing like that happened; she could gaze at them all day long if she wished.

I only knew one thing for sure, I was never going near that bloody mine again.

My dream that night started off the same as it always did; Lucy and I sitting in blissful silence in my university house with a storm raging safely outside, each bolt of lightning briefly illuminating us and the room, each crash of thunder reminding us that we were perfectly safe inside.

The wind started to howl aggressively outside, tree branches struck the windows and the rain pummelled the building. The thunder and lightning struck more and more frequently as the rain and wind became more violent. At once all of the windows around us smashed and a deluge of unnatural rain filled the room from all sides. The lightning strikes became almost constant and the thunder became deafening. We held each other tightly, just hoping the storm would end. We had no such luck. The walls started to crumble and collapse, letting even more rain in and allowing the lightning to get even closer to us. All we could do was sit in each other’s arms, watching the havoc unfold. I looked towards Lucy as she looked back at me; I could see the terror in her deep blue eyes before she buried her head in my embrace. She moved her hand towards her neck and clutched a necklace of some kind. I’d never seen it before which surprised me. I could only see its basic oval shape from the small amount I could see in her hand, but it glowed a soft, almost calming blue.

We stayed in that position as the encircling rain and lightning advanced with parts of the building falling all around us. Lucy looked back up at me, tears streaming down her face, as a huge bolt of lightning struck us.

I screamed and abruptly sat up, waking up Kate on the other side of the torchlit room.

Kate, half asleep and startled, reached for her sword shouting “What? What’s happening?!” I looked around, heavily breathing, to find that nothing had changed, everything was as it should be. “Well?” Kate sounded frustrated at being woken up.

I looked over to her with a panicked look, sweat dripping down my face and with a sigh said, “I don’t fucking know.” Before wiping the sweat off my face and lying back down. “Fuck me…”

“Bloody hell, is this to do with the diamonds?” She sounded genuinely concerned. My look over to her seemed to say it all without any need for words. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for all of this. I swear I had no idea this would happen.” I didn’t blame her at all, she couldn’t have possibly known what would happen, but she seemed to feel endlessly guilty about this. I told her that I would tell her about it in the morning and, after some convincing that I didn’t need anything, she went back to sleep. I tried not to however, I really didn’t want to sleep knowing that I would probably just have another nightmare like that again. I just lay down with my thoughts and tried to figure out what the hell everything meant. The ordeals that day had left me completely exhausted however and I soon found myself sleeping a fortunately dreamless sleep.


	5. Rest

**Late afternoon, 23 rd June**

Kate had woken me up at the crack of dawn that day as usual but, rather than making me get up to help her gather resources, she told me that I was going to stay in the shelter all day. She was still feeling guilty about her diamonds doing what they had done to me and she wanted me to recover. I was quite ok with this; as boring as being back at the shelter was, at least I wouldn’t be nearly getting killed by monsters, slaughtering innocent animals, or doing backbreaking work. It genuinely helped as well, my back was still killing me that morning and I had barely got any real sleep the previous night, so it was nice to have some time to not do anything, a rarity by this point. I did try to tell her that I didn’t blame her at all for what happened but she wasn’t having any of it.

As the day came to a close, Kate was still out but likely heading back to the shelter having collected what she needed to. The sun was about to set on an abnormally uneventful day and I was enjoying my time doing nothing, despite the previous day’s events. My back at this point in the day still wasn’t perfect but was much better than it had been previously and I’d pushed all thoughts of the visions to the back of my mind. Unfortunately, however, this island didn’t seem to be able to let my life be calm and quiet for even one day.

I heard the huge crack of thunder first. The building shook violently and knocked most of Kate’s belongings off their surfaces. Several nails in the wooden planks of the building were shaken out and the ends of a couple of bowed planks popped out of their places. I immediately shot out of bed in a panic, about to rush outside to see what on earth had happened. I had started to make motions towards the door when I came across an unnerving smell.

_Burning wood!_

Swearing loudly, I charged outside and hoped that I was imagining all of this. Once I got far enough away from the shelter, I could see the tip of the flames beginning to engulf the building, beginning just above where I had been sitting. I had no idea what to do; I just watched in bewilderment as the flames grew higher and spread across the roof, planks of wood started to break off and fall inside. I was a fair distance from the building but there was still a considerable amount of heat being given off. In the distance I heard Kate shouting at me, I turned around to see her running towards me, horror written across her face.

“What the hell happened?!” She had to shout over the increasing sound of burning wood. “I saw the lightning from fucking ages away!”

“I’ve got no bloody idea! I was sitting inside and it just happened!” Despite asking me the question, Kate didn’t listen to the answer, she just had a blank look on her face as she thought of what to do. The sun had nearly set so the monsters were going to start showing their faces at any moment. Kate quickly looked back and forth across the landscape, looking for anywhere that we could stay in safely for the night.

After a short while of panicked thought, I could see that Kate had an idea. Without warning, she grabbed my arm and ran towards the shelter. I tried asking her what on earth she was doing but she didn’t listen, she was focused. She dragged me in through the front door as I tried to resist. A large part of the burning ceiling collapsed in right front of us as soon as we entered. We both shielded our faces and Kate bravely kicked the burning wood blocking the way, completely destroying it and clearing the way.

She turned to face me as she pulled me closer and simply shouted, “Mine! Now!” I timidly nodded as she shoved me towards the wooden panel blocking the entrance to the mine on the far side of the building. I lifted my shirt up to cover my mouth and nose as I began to take the complicated route around the sections of collapsed ceiling, some of which was still on fire, and parts of the burning floor to get there. The heat was intense, the smoke nearly completely covered my vision, and I could barely breathe. Though somehow, through my confused stumbling, I managed to run into the wooden panel. Literally.

Barely registering that I’d snapped one of the planks with my head, I stumbled back and hastily pushed it out of the way. It fell on the floor and blew the flames around it in all directions. I covered my face from the heat being projected towards me and looked around for Kate but I could hardly see a thing. I was terrified; I didn’t know whether to go and look for her, to stay there and wait, or just leave her and assume she could get out fine.

I didn’t have long to panic about this. Kate burst through the smoke, carrying a small wooden box and charging directly at me as she shouted, “Move! Down!”

Immediately, I turned and ran as fast as I could down the lengthy passage. Despite nearly killing myself several times by rushing down the dangerous steps, we both made it down safely.

Kate dropped her box on the floor and we both hunched over, coughing and spluttering for a good few minutes while trying to catch our breath. Kate, having been in the thick smoke for longer, was worse off than me so she eventually indicated for me to move the wooden panel leaning next to the entrance to block the passage, a similar looking panel to the one in the hut. Once I had done this, I leant up against the wall next to the entrance and slid down until I was sitting against it. The ache in my back reappeared as I took a few deep breaths to calm myself.

I felt very uneasy about being in this room considering what happened with Kate’s diamonds the other day, but I pushed that thought to the back of my mind since we had no choice.

After both of us had been sitting on the floor for a while, occasionally coughing and trying to catch our breath, we tried to figure out what had actually happened. All we knew was that the lightning was centred on me. It was a single bolt of lightning and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky at the time. There was no way it could have been a coincidence; this was something to do with me and the diamonds. I made damn sure that the box with them in was nowhere near me, I didn’t particularly fancy going through that ordeal again.

We sat in silence, not knowing what to do with ourselves. I heard monsters on the other side of the iron door that led to Kate’s mine. I mentioned my worries about that to her, at which she laughed and remarked that there was a reason she built the door. She assured me that we were safe.

Our food that night was pretty dismal. Thankfully Kate had the foresight to rescue the wooden box of pork from the burning shelter. Unfortunately, however, we had to eat it raw as there was no heat source at all underground. While this isn’t particularly dangerous, unless you’re really unlucky, it had a horrible taste and texture.

After some time of silence, I decided that now would be a good time to ask the question I’d been meaning to ask Kate ever since I met her. If she knew of any way at all off the island and back to civilisation. I felt like I knew the answer anyway; it wasn’t like she was there out of choice.

She sat unmoving and dejectedly replied, “If there is, I haven’t bloody found one. Trust me, I would like nothing more than to leave this sodding place behind and go back home.” She let out a long sigh and started to idly fiddle with a small splinter of wood she’d found on the floor. “I haven’t been able to explore the whole island, granted, but as far as I can see we’re too far away from any other land to risk building some kind of raft. I wish I could just build a proper fucking boat.” I could see the anger building up inside her.

She quickly stood up and threw the piece of wood onto the floor. While shouting, “Fucking bullshit!” as loud as possible, she kicked her workbench so hard that one of the legs snapped in half, causing it to completely collapse and knock all of the tool pieces that were on it onto the floor. She rested her forehead on the wall, closed her eyes, sighed loudly, and muttered, “I’m fucking sick of this place. Every time you think things are going well, it decides to just shit on you. Just when you get sorted for food, water and shelter, something happens and you have to begin all-fucking-over again.”

I didn’t know what to say at all. I knew that I probably wouldn’t be successful in trying to cheer her up; she’d been on the island for a lot longer than me and I couldn’t possibly comprehend what she was going through.

I tried to help as best as I could, but she eventually just said, “Sorry, you don’t need to hear my problems. Everyone’s got their own shit to deal with,” as she returned and sat down next to me. I sombrely nodded in agreement as my thoughts turned, once again, towards Lucy. It seemed that Kate could somehow sense this when she then said, “Go on, tell me about your bird back in England. Lucy, was it?”

“Yeah. That’s her.” I started staring into space and thinking deeply about my next words. “I met her on my course at university; we were working together with a couple of other people for a group project in first year. Me and her ended up being the only two doing any work and we just kind of… Clicked. I don’t really know how to describe it. I asked her if I could go with her to our course’s first social,” I chuckled a little to myself. “Hedging my bets, I guess. I figured if she wasn’t actually into me then we could just have been going as friends and I could preserve my dignity. Turns out she _was_ into me though; I ended up going to her place that night.”

“You fucked on the first date?” Kate sounded weirdly impressed.

“Nah. We actually stayed up for most of the night just talking. We had a bit of a snog but agreed that we should probably take things kind of slowly.”

“Ah, so you fucked on the second date?”

Slightly taken aback by the forward question, I awkwardly cleared my throat and muttered, “Yeah.”

“Hah. Students.” She seemed very proud of herself. “How long have you been dating?”

“We will have been going out for two years in a few weeks. It is…” I hesitated for a moment, briefly remembering the situation I was in, “It _was_ the longest any relationship of mine has ever lasted.”

“Do you reckon you love her, then?”

Quietly I muttered, “Yeah,” trying to hold back tears.

“Aw, that’s cute.” She could see me tearing up and so put her arm around me and pulled me in close. “You’re going to be fine, Mark. You’ll see her again.”

While I didn’t quite believe her – I was pretty sure I was doomed to stay on this island forever – she still made me feel better. Despite how much I hated thinking about not being able to get back, I enjoyed talking about Lucy; it was like I was reliving the moments when we first met. The memories made me feel happy, if only for a brief moment.

We sat in silence for a while as I tried to calm myself down. Kate, still with her arm around me, was staring into space, deep in her own thoughts. It was weirdly nice; I’d had such little human contact since arriving on the island that anything felt like bliss to me. After a few minutes, Kate snapped out of her self-imposed trance to ask me, “What’re your mates like then? The ones you were on your ‘lads' holiday’ with.” She thought for a moment before saying, “By the way, I’ve never heard of a lads’ holiday on a bloody yacht before.”

I smirked and said, “Well, Tom was the one who dubbed it a lads’ holiday. If he had a girlfriend, I can assure you that she and, by extension, Lucy would have been invited though.”

“Sounds like an arsehole.” Kate quickly interjected

“Nah…” I responded instantly before trailing off as I really thought about it. “Maybe a bit. But he’s definitely my best friend, we’d do anything for each other.” I continued on, talking at length about Tom. The more I talked about him the more I realised that we were completely different. He was a large, strong and loud man, especially where alcohol was concerned, whereas I was a more reserved, averagely built man who seemed to be able to take alcohol considerably better. Nonetheless, we were friends. Perhaps we were better friends because of our differences.

After explaining everything about Tom, I moved on. “Then there’s David. He’s wildly different. He’s always been at the height of fashion and thinks he’s infinitely cool. He’s a good friend, though. Always there when I need him, despite his protests. Crazy good at history too.”

“Oh? How good? He just got slightly more interesting.”

“He’s doing his degree in medieval and... the bit after that,” I stalled as I tried to remember what David had called it. “I want to say early modern history.” Kate nodded, presumably to inform me that I had indeed said a period of history that existed. “Give him any event in between the year 1000 and 1700 and he could probably date it exactly. I have no idea how he does it.” I wasn’t exaggerating. He had an incredible ability to remember a ludicrous amount of dates, people and events from those time periods. For all I knew he completely made up his facts, but he seemed genuine enough for me to believe him. Oddly enough, it was the one thing he had the ability to boast about but tended not to. He’d usually boast about things he’d made up, like his alleged successes with women and social media fame (which actually consisted of a combined total of just over 150 followers on Instagram and Twitter).

I finished up David’s story and continued, “Lastly there’s Sam. I’ve only known him for a couple of years but he’s been a good friend at uni. He’s quiet, much quieter than me, but get him to let go a bit and he’s a lot of fun and can be incredibly quick-witted.” Tom and David didn’t take to Sam as quickly as I had. He might have seemed a bit too quiet when I first introduced him at the pub but, when he eventually photobombed his first David Instagram photo, he was officially part of the group.

We spent a long time that evening talking, not about anything quite as deep or depressing as our lives back home though. Eventually, we got onto talking about what we should do about the mess we found ourselves in. Obviously rebuilding the shelter was our number one priority, so we decided that one of us should clear out the destroyed shelter, salvaging what wood we could, and the other should work on collecting more wood. Kate knew how to build the shelter back up so she was going to teach me. It likely would take much longer than one day so we would have to retreat to the mine every night until the shelter was safe to sleep in. We had no idea what condition the shelter was actually in so we couldn’t plan out how long it would take at all sadly; Kate estimated it would probably take about a week if things went relatively smoothly. So, knowing the island’s ways, it would probably take about two weeks.

We eventually decided that we should get some sleep. Not having beds, we had to make do with the hard stone floor, it was extremely uncomfortable but we knew we had to sleep if we were going to make it through the next day.

Down in the mine, we had no concept of time. We couldn’t see the sky at all so we had no idea when the sun rose. As a result, we woke up and left the mine much later than we had planned, not that we knew that at the time. We had both had terrible night’s sleeps on the horribly uncomfortable stone floor.

I wearily pushed the wooden panel blocking the exit out of the way. From the bottom of the cave, we couldn’t see the destruction of the shelter, but our hopes for a small amount of work weren’t high when we saw multiple charred planks of wood sprawled across the top few steps. Kate told me she would go up first as we began our ascent to the surface. I’d left my sword in the inferno the night before, but Kate had hers drawn and ready. Ascending the length was a slow process since we were making sure to listen out for any movement and didn’t want to make too much noise. As we approached the top, we could hear footsteps nearby. We couldn’t work out what was causing them so we kept our guard up, despite it being more likely that they were just from a nosey animal than anything dangerous.

The sun was beaming through the now open roof, we realised at this point that we’d slept in far too late; it was about midday and we had an awful lot of work to be getting on with.

Once we had cautiously poked our heads through the cave exit, we could finally see the devastation for ourselves. The frame of the shelter remained, all of the walls were still nicely mapped out by the skeleton structure, but nearly everything else had collapsed or burned up. We reached the top to find there were no monsters in sight, but also no easy way through the ruin since wood of varying degrees of damage was strewn across the floor. The beds had been crushed by debris along with most of the tables and storage containers. Broken glass lay all over the floor where the windows had once been and the oven lay in pieces.

Kate lowered her sword and slowly shuffled through the wreckage, idly pushing charred planks of wood aside with the tip of the weapon. She looked completely dejected; this place had been her life for the past few years and now she was walking through its remains.

I held back for a moment, letting her have some time to herself through this. I thought that last thing she wanted was for me to clumsily try and make her feel better or make a stupid joke. I was watching Kate come to terms with the whole situation, mentally debating whether or not I should talk to her or not, for some time. It was the first time I’d seen her without a complete grasp on the situation; it was a strange sight.

A lump formed in my throat as guilt hit me. This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t entered into her life. It wasn’t like I ever intended for this to happen, but I felt like she would have been better off if she had never met me. It seemed like I had only ever put her in danger since she found me.

Without warning, I was pulled backwards and completely lost my sight. I let out a muffled scream as I was violently pulled to the floor by the sack covering my head. My head smashed into the hard wooden floor and I felt the plank I hit break slightly as a wave of pain washed over me. The assailant held my arms behind my back and put all of their weight into stopping me from struggling as they shouted something someone else. Breathing became incredibly difficult with my covered face down on the floor. I could hear Kate and a few other voices shouting and frantically moving about. I struggled on the floor as much as I could as I desperately tried to free myself. I managed to lift my head up but it was immediately slammed into the floor again. I was in immense pain, the only thing fighting off unconsciousness at this point was the adrenaline coursing through my body.

All of a sudden the weight on my body was gone, whatever was holding me down had been thrown off. I carefully stood up amongst all of the chaos but was still unable to see. Before I could remove the cover, I was tackled to the ground again. They slammed my body into every protuding plank on the way. The adrenaline wasn’t enough to keep me conscious anymore; I tried to fight it as best as I could but it wasn’t enough, I was gone within seconds.


	6. A Change of Scenery

**Late Evening, 24 th June**

I coughed and spluttered myself awake to find that I was sat on a cold stone floor up against a rough but certainly crafted vertical stone wall. My wrists were bound together above my head by a set of rough and heavy irons which were in turn chained to the wall that my back was resting on. My head ached and I could feel several cuts and bruises all over my body from the previous encounter. I reluctantly lifted my head and hauled my heavy eyelids apart to look at where I had ended up. As the muscles in my face contorted my skin, I felt the cracking and flaking of the dried blood that ran from my forehead, around one eye, and down my cheek.

Other than a set of iron bars with a locked gate in the centre, I was surrounded on almost all sides by walls made of the same dull, grey, and rough stone bricks that made up the floor. This area was not well maintained at all, there was a strong smell of damp and I could see the beginnings of mould forming around a small wet patch of floor near the entrance. It looked like some sort of a prison cell but I didn’t think that could be possible, there were no other people on this island.

I had absolutely no idea what had happened and began to wonder if the monsters had started to take prisoners for whatever reason, but I dismissed the thought when I heard some distant voices outside the cell. I tried to move so that I could see down the narrow and dull stone corridor outside but the combination of my chains and aching joints meant that seeing much more was impossible. The two voices became louder as I heard footsteps approaching my cell. When they got close enough, I could just about hear their conversation. The deep and well-spoken voices seemed to be sceptical of what someone else had told them about someone being special in some way. I didn’t have much of an idea of what they were talking about but they seemed to find the topic very amusing. Nevertheless, they had to go and interrogate a prisoner about it. The person who’d told them the story was clearly in a superior position of power to these people and so they had to go along with it.

Typical; the first other people we meet on this island and they arrest us. I wondered what had happened to Kate. Assuming she didn’t go quietly and probably caused most of the chaos back at the hut, I wondered if they managed to get her too, or possibly worse.

The two talking men eventually came into view, only to increase the oddity of my situation immensely. They were two large and strong looking men who seemed to be wearing some sort of medieval guard’s armour. It was one of the strangest things I had ever seen. They wore chainmail from the shoulders down that appeared to have been severely dulled from time and use, with some sort of marine blue fabric covering their upper bodies, emblazoned on which was a yellow design of a circular shield with a sword diagonally across it and a large elliptical-shaped pendant in the centre just in front of the sword. Despite the small amount of detail the design offered, it was clear that the pictured sword, shield, and pendant were supposed to be very ornate; they seemed very important to these people in some way.

The younger of the two guards was wearing a simple iron helmet with a nose guard down its centre whereas the more senior guard was holding his similar but slightly more armoured helmet by his side, revealing his short and cropped greying hair, as he strode with confidence towards my cell. The older guard seemed to be more highly ranked than his younger counterpart. His armour seemed to have much more intricate designs on it, plus he had a much better beard, clearly a sign of importance. He couldn’t have been a great deal more important though, they seemed to have the same sword sheathed away and essentially the same armour despite the difference in decoration.

The older guard was carrying a small box that I recognised. _The diamonds!_ The thought of them opening that box terrified me, my immediate reaction was to shuffle as far back against the wall as I could.

The older guard turned to face the younger and indicated in my direction, “He is the ‘special’ one then, is he?”

“Yes Sir, cell thirteen.”

“This pathetic little baby?” The younger guard just nodded, “Fine. I will show him the diamonds and prove our _esteemed_ ruler wrong.”

I recoiled at this notion. “Please, no! I can’t do that again!” I shouted weakly, pleading desperately with them. The older guard just shrugged his shoulders and quickly opened the box right in my vision.

The same bright blue light flooded out and the agonising pain was back. I screamed out and tried to move away in any direction but was completely trapped. I couldn’t see a thing and the pain was so intense I couldn’t think about anything else. I remained like this for what felt like an age with a constant torrent of pain coursing through me.

In an instant, my sight was returned to me but I was not in the same place I was earlier. Still in constant agony, my joints completely seized from the unnatural pain but I fought to keep standing upright. I was overlooking a large medieval-style city with a big stone wall surrounding it and a huge castle within. It was all in ruin; plumes of smoke were billowing up from all over it and a great deal of it seemed to be on fire. I could hear screaming and shouting from its direction, the sounds were horrible.

I looked to the floor beneath me and saw a man on his back on the floor. His faded purple overcoat and discoloured white tunic were severely bloodstained and the fingers on his left hand looked broken. An ornamental sword had been plunged into his stomach and he lay completely lifeless on the ground.

Without being able to come up with comprehensible thoughts through the torture, I grasped the handle of the sword.

Similarly to before, the entire scene stopped. The fire over the buildings froze and the chaos paused. I was no longer in pain and was left staring at the destruction before me. As I breathed a sigh of relief, I let go of the sword. The weapon’s pommel shone a bright blue and erupted in a burst of energy that launched me back.

Once again, my ears were harshly ringing and my body ached all over. My arms were free of their bindings and the black dust that had once been the irons and chains was partially hanging lazily in the air and partially spread across the floor. I lay in place, face down on the floor and unable to move or focus on anything. I felt absolutely drained of all my energy and was thankful that no one bothered me for quite some time.

After what could have been any amount of time between ten minutes and an hour, I heard the same two voices saying something down the corridor along with a booming, much deeper, and more powerful sounding voice. I couldn’t make out what any one of them were saying but the two guards sounded incredibly panicked.

“This is the one is it?” The third voice said with a sense of calm that seemed unjust when compared to the other two. I still felt unable to move so I couldn’t get a look at him, but he certainly sounded like he was a step above the other two guards. The younger guard shyly confirmed that they were at the correct cell and was then instructed to open the cell door.

“Begging your forgiveness, but I don’t think that’s wise.” The older guard took a far more serious tone than earlier. “Who knows what he’s capable of?”

There was a brief pause until the third man dismissively said, “Open the cell.”

I heard the nervous shaking of keys in the lock before the creaking of the rusting iron gate swinging open. Footsteps slowly descended upon me. I didn’t move; I couldn’t find the energy to do anything.

The voice behind me waited for a moment before demanding, “Get him up.” The two guards rushed over to me, their chainmail rattling irritatingly as they went. They moved either side of me, grabbed my upper arms, and lifted me up to me knees. I hung my head low, relying on them completely for support and staring down at the expensive and regal looking shoes on the feet of the man standing before me. “Look. At. Me.” Despite his obvious frustration, I did not obey. I was simply drained and couldn’t possibly lift my head no matter how much I wanted to.

One of the guard’s knees launched at my stomach, colliding with its side seemingly as hard as he could. I instantly lurched forwards, trying to double over but unable to and nearly throwing up in the process. Heaving and coughing, I tried unsuccessfully to get my breath back. I stared at the floor, still supported by the two guards, and wheezed heavily.

The other guard grabbed the hair on the back of my head and wrenched it painfully back so my face was staring up at the man standing before me. Gazing up at his head, he looked incredibly poised. He was a little over middle aged, at least in his mid to late fifties, though with long white and wispy hair and a full white beard. He had a gold necklace draped around his neck, covered in expensive gems. His purple fur-lined cloak screamed wealth and his dominion over the guards showed he had some serious power.

“You can’t possibly be one who can control the diamonds’ power, can you?” He asked derisively, spitting a little with each hard syllable.

I coughed loudly in an unsuccessful attempt to clear my throat and replied, “I don’t bloody feel like I am.” The man in front of me seemed unimpressed. “But if you’re asking me whether I can’t look at them without the risk of being launched at a fucking wall, then I’m your man.”

“Show your King some respect!” Barked one of the guards. I was wondering what on Earth I’d gotten myself into, the mention of a king made me feel like I’d been thrown back in time.

He looked at the senior of the two guards. “Unfortunately, you may be right. This…” He paused, trying to think of the right word. “This boy may be who we’re looking for. Get him cleaned up and taken to my study.”

Without another word, the King left me with the two guards who unceremoniously dropped me on the ground as soon as he’d left. The younger of the two briefly left us to fetch another set of iron shackles and, while the older guard held my arms together in front of me, he tentatively placed them around my wrists. Together, they led me out of the cell and to the end of the long corridor that was lined with mostly empty cells, each drearier and more depressing than the last. On the rare occasion that someone was in one of the ten or eleven cells we passed, they tended to be hunched in one corner desperately trying to sleep or just generally not paying any attention to the world they showed a clear resentment to. They all looked like they were in a terrible state; malnourished and sleep deprived, their clothes were in tatters and a couple of them had several small wounds that had become seriously infected. Kate wasn’t in any of the cells we passed which I was both thankful for and worried about. Maybe she’d escaped, maybe she was just in one of the cells behind us that we didn’t pass, or maybe something much worse had happened to her.

We arrived at the end to find a large wooden barrel, held together with two iron strips across its top and bottom. The older guard left me in the hands of the younger to lift the slim wooden top off it and reveal slightly dirty water filled to the brim of the barrel. I was positioned so that I was kneeling in front of it, my face just above the top of the barrel and my head held up by the hair on the back of my head. The older guard scooped some of the cold water with his hands and threw some of it into my face. I flinched backwards and hit my head on the armour of the younger guard as the brown-tinged water ran down my face and body, mixing with the dirt and blood covering me and eventually pooling into a disgusting mixture on the floor. This was repeated several times over, each leaving me feeling dirtier than the last despite the guards’ intentions.

Dripping with filthy water, a cover was roughly forced over my head to restrict my vision and I was forcefully escorted through the building. Throughout the trip, I could hear the distant murmurs of curious onlookers judging and discussing my presence and appearance. We briefly stopped as the younger guard, under the instruction of the senior guard, opened a door in front of us. I heard him rush back behind me as they shoved me into the room, nearly knocking me over completely.

There was a brief pause of silence that was broken by the King as his booming voice travelled across the room to say, “When I said get him cleaned up.” He paused and sighed, sounding very irritated. “I meant _actually_ clean him. I did not mean splash some dirty water on his face and cart him around like he was a common criminal.” His voice raised as his displeasure could be heard even in the previous room. “And get that damned sack off his head!”

The cover was quickly whipped off my head, revealing the candle-lit room before me. The large windows at the opposite end of the averagely sized room extended all of the way up to the tall ceiling, providing a clear view of the bright stars in the expansive night sky. The view was somewhat obscured by the surprising amount of light being supplied by the large candles dotted all over the room. The walls on either side were lined with shelves full of books. Some sections contained brand-new books that were all neatly aligned either by the ends of the shelves or by bespoke bookends, but others were full of misshapen and decaying books that were not standing the test of time particularly well. A large wooden desk took centre stage on top of a square red rug which in turn was on top of a dark wooden floor. The King stood over the desk. He appeared to have been studying an old and decrepit book that was placed open on the desk just in front of him.

“Forgive me, your Majesty,” The more senior guard began apologetically. “Should we get him cleaned and return with him later?”

“No, never mind. You have already treated him badly enough as it is. I am certain you would only make it worse.” The frustrated monarch walked around the table and up to me, his similar height to my own not aiding his attempts to be intimidating. “Young man, what do you know of diamonds? Ordinary diamonds.”

Slightly perplexed, I began to try and remember what I had learned in my GCSEs, “Something to do with carbon, right? Coal but… stronger.”

“Well,” He began, seeming somewhat confused, “I am not quite sure of this ‘carbon’ nonsense.” He thought for a moment. “In any case, what about the ‘Diamonds of Perdition’?

“Diamonds of…” I paused for a moment. This sounded like something out of a bad fantasy story. “… Perdition? Isn’t perdition some kind of, like, damnation?”

“Indeed. They’re similar to ordinary, or your ‘carbon’ diamonds, but they’re formed in the Nether.” He tried to make that sound dramatic, but the ‘Nether’ just sounded like a PG version of Hell to me. “Those that we showed you earlier are some of those very diamonds.”

He spent the next half hour going over these diamonds in as much excruciating detail as he could. They were scattered across the island when humans settled on it, but no one knew how they got there. The effects had been documented, but very few facts had been revealed. The Hell origin seemed to come from speculation more than anything.

The King seemed oddly certain that they were a gift, or possibly a test, from God. I was almost entirely sure that there’s nothing like that in the bible, so it seemed like a strange addition to their presumably Christian faith to me. In any case, I asked no questions so that I could leave as quickly as possible.

Whatever had happened, I was told that three artefacts were found on the island as well as some of the diamonds, though clearly not all of them. Each artefact could be used in conjunction with the diamonds to give the users immense power. No one knew who made them or why, but I was told that those with them would basically be unstoppable. There was a sword, imbued with the power of one of the harshest natural phenomena, lightning. There was also a shield that allowed the user to control a large number of things, both sentient and non-sentient. This was apparently the most difficult one to learn to use. The third was an amulet, the power of which had been lost to time along with the amulet itself. The book on the desk, from which the man was getting all of this information, claimed that a special few could control the diamonds and one specific artefact and even fewer could control all three of them. The King seemed to think that I could control at least one of the artefacts.

“The diamonds have given you visions have they not?” I quickly nodded, starting to buy into this nonsense, “Which artefact have you seen in those?”

I paused for a short while. _How did he know that I’d seen them?_ “All three,” I hesitantly replied. “Although one was just in a dream.”

“A dream you had after you first saw a diamond?” I nodded in agreement again. “I’m not sure I believe this but, according to our knowledge, you may be able to control all three.” He immediately seemed humbled by me and in awe of this, despite never seeing any evidence for himself so far. “You should go to sleep. I have a lot of work to do.” He turned away from me and moved towards his book. “My men will prepare a chamber in the castle for you.” The revelation that I was in a castle only hit me after the conversation had finished.

The guards started to manoeuvre me towards the door but I struggled free and yelled out, “Wait!” at the King, who quickly turned around with an alarmed expression across his face. “I couldn’t give a shit about all of this bollocks right now. Is Kate alright? Let me see Kate.”

“Kate?” He thought for a moment. “Ah. The woman you were with?” Pausing briefly to try to form his answer delicately. “That is not possible. She is not to be trusted.”

“Not to be trusted? Why is she so much less trustworthy than me?” I was starting to get irritated.

“She badly injured two of my men!” He snapped back at me

“Your men attacked us! What did you expect her to do?!” The King opened his mouth to say something but I cut him off before he started, “You’ve caused your own bloody distrust! You attacked us, you injured us, you locked us up in damp, disgusting cells and treated us like we’re the fucking scum of the Earth and you still maintain that you can’t grant us one little bit of luxury?! I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for her! Not to mention how you even found us; have you been following us? Following her the entire time she’s been here?!”

“Of course not!” The King was quick to interrupt, “We followed the obvious lightning that set your hut on fire.”

“You didn’t have to fucking attack us!” I started to get lost in my rant, completely forgetting that I wasn’t in a position of power at all. “I’m not doing anything you want from me until you let her out. You can do what you want, but I’m not going to fucking help you with your magic diamond sword bollocks until she’s treated like a human being. Let her out. You wankers owe us that much.”

He was taken aback by the whole outburst, as was I to be honest. He thought hard for a while as the guards opened the door and began to escort me out of the room. I resisted a small amount, but not nearly enough to slow them a considerable amount.

“Ok,” The King said, dejected. The guards stopped and looked back at the King in disbelief. “I’m not going to lie to you, boy. We’re going to be asking a lot of you over the coming days. It would be unjust to deny you your wish. You will see her before the night is over. You have my word. However, if she causes any trouble, she _will_ be going back in her cell.”

I calmed down and let out a quiet and exasperated, “Thank you,” as the guards escorted me out of the room. I couldn’t think of anything else to say at that point, I’d never had an outburst like that before so I was still trying to piece together what had just happened. I was just happy it all seemed to go relatively well, much better than it probably should have. I considered fighting against his consistent referring to me as a boy but decided that it was better to pick my battles carefully.

The route to my chamber wasn’t particularly interesting. Narrow stone corridors in an arch shape with only the tiniest slit windows to the darkened outside world. A red carpet with gold trimmings on its edges perfectly ran down the centre of each one and candles provided light from their holds on both walls. Along the way the guards barked some orders at a passing servant to prepare my chamber, making them rush on ahead to get started. I would have been happy with a warm room and some straw to lie on at this point, I didn’t care if they adequately prepared the room or not.

We passed all sorts of people going about their business. Some were servants rushing around, trying to keep the castle perfect, others were pairs of guards either marching the halls or standing to attention, all using similar equipment to those escorting me. All of the people we passed stared at me at length. I was filthy, blood-stained, in strange clothes and being pushed along by irritated looking guards. I was an odd sight.

When we reached the room, the servants were still working so we had to wait outside in silence. I asked the guards if they would undo the shackles around my wrists but they wouldn’t allow it until I was in the room, yet it would allegedly have been rude to enter the room before they had finished. Ridiculous customs for someone in my situation. I just wanted some sleep.

After about ten minutes, the servants left, my shackles were released, and I was shoved into the room. The guards slammed the door behind me after instructing me that I wasn’t to leave the room under any circumstances until the King fetched me in the morning. Not even to go to the toilet, I had a ‘spacious’ chamber pot for that.

Lack of hygiene aside, it was a grand room. A huge bed up against the wall drew the focus. While the feather mattress wasn’t huge, a small double at best, the grand wooden headboard gave it a huge sense of presence. It stretched way up to the ten-foot-high ceiling and was thick enough to look load-bearing. The intricate carvings of leaves and berries all over it were impressive, to say the least.

A large fireplace was embedded in the wall near the bed with a roaring fire going. At that moment I took everything back I’d thought about the necessity of the servants, I was in heaven. Comfortable cushioned seats and chairs dotted the edges of the moderately sized room and a wooden screen sat in the corner, carved in a similar manner to the bed’s headboard. Everything was exquisite.

While the room was almost perfect, I couldn’t say that I was a fan of the clothes they had laid out. There were two piles of clothes laid side by side on the bed before me. I assumed one set was for me as it looked like the kind of dress-wear I expected medieval men to wear with my very limited knowledge of the time. There was a loose-fitting white linen shirt designed to go underneath a relatively short blue woollen tunic. Along with these was a pair of also loose-fitting trousers with a big leather belt and leather shoes, painted black, at the foot of the bed. The other pile of clothes looked more typically medieval-feminine. There was a tight-fitting long blue dress that looked like it was to be laced up at the top, with a long cloth overcoat (which I later found out was called a ‘surcoat’) and a corset to go underneath. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out who the second set of clothes were for – not exactly thinking straight after the day’s events – before simply collapsing into one of the comfortable chairs when I decided that I didn’t care enough to dwell on it further.

A short while later, I realised I had dozed off in the chair when I was woken up by some muffled talking behind the door. It sounded like the same two guards again and a female voice but I couldn’t make out much more of that. I quietly got up and moved towards the door, focusing intently on listening to the conversation, though with little success. As I neared the door, it suddenly swung open taking me completely by surprise as I jumped back. The guards pushed someone through the door and slammed it shut again.

“Kate!” I gleefully shouted at the stumbling woman before me.

“Mark?” She quickly regained her balance and looked up at me. “Mark!” We quickly moved towards each other, stretched out our arms and hugged. “Fuck me it’s good to see a friendly face.” We retracted and stepped back a bit, “Even if it is yours.” She briefly smirked. “Are you alright? What the hell is going on?”

“I’ll be honest, everything’s been pretty much explained to me and I still have a very loose grasp on the situation.”

“Sounds heavy. Sounds like a sit-down conversation to me.” I agreed and we moved over to where our clothes had been laid out on the bed. “What the fuck are these? Are we supposed to wear these?” She picked up her surcoat and harshly judged it.

“I think so. They look bloody horrible, right?”

“I’m just going to wash my stuff and wear that. Their poncy crap can bugger off.” We dumped our two piles of clothes on the floor and sat on the bed. I explained everything I knew at that point, all about what the King said about my potential abilities and what the diamonds could supposedly do. I was still quite on the fence about whether or not I believed him or not.

“Fucking what?” Kate responded to my story, certainly feeling like it was nonsense.

“Pretty crazy, right?”

“Not just crazy. Bat-shit insane. You don’t believe this do you, Mark?”

“You haven’t been through what I have with the Diamonds, Kate. I’m not saying I unconditionally believe it but there’s a definite chance.”

Kate thought for a moment. She couldn’t think of much to say to that before eventually replying with, “Just be careful Mark. I may not know what you’ve been through, but you don’t know what I’ve been through with these guys either.”

I didn’t understand what she meant by that. I spent a little while trying to figure it out in my head before plainly asking, “What _have_ you been through?”

“Shall I start from the beginning?” I was about to answer yes but she wasn’t going to wait for an answer anyway. “When we were attacked, they held you down as they tried to get me too. I ended up trying to fight off three of the bastards; I think I might have kicked one of them into the guy holding you down at one point.” That explained why I was suddenly freed for about half a second during the fight. “When I realised there wasn’t much of a way out of the situation, I tried to reason with them. They pretended like they were going to go along with it and be peaceful right up until I put my sword on the ground.” She paused to show cuts and bruises across her arms and legs. She began to speak again as she pulled back her hair to show her blood-encrusted scalp. “They just beat the shit out of me until I couldn’t put up a fight so that they could take us here. So much for fucking honour and chivalry.”

I was at a loss for words. I felt like it was all my fault. She was living a relatively peaceful life until I entered it. This was the first time I’d seen her not be able to handle a situation and it was slightly distressing. “Jesus, Kate. I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be, it’s not your fault. Just be wary of them, ok?”

I nodded in agreement before asking, “Are you alright? Is it painful?”

“I’ll be fine,” She quickly replied, likely not wanting to admit the pain and cause a fuss over it. “Let’s just get some sleep.”

I agreed and we decided to have a brief (and in Kate’s case, careful) wash in the large trough of water provided to us for this purpose. We simply splashed water over our faces to wash out the most gregarious of blemishes, we were past the point of caring too much about proper hygiene. The once-clean water slowly turned into a disgusting brown-red mess in the trough.

Once we were done, Kate moved to get ready for sleep before a thought dawned on me,

“Wait. You’re not sleeping here, are you?” I asked her, feeling slightly worried.

“Yeah, where are you sleeping?”

“… Here.”

“Oh.” Kate thought for a moment, not quite understanding my concern. “I guess that makes sense.”

I tried to think of a solution to this. I didn’t fancy sleeping in the same bed, I wanted a full bed to myself after everything that had happened. “Shall I sleep on one of the chairs? Or we could top and tail?” I asked, somewhat hoping she would offer to sleep on a chair instead.

“What? Don’t be silly.” She said condescendingly as she began to undress. I averted my gaze as she said, “Just bloody get in.”

Reluctantly, I agreed and moved over to the other side of the bed and did the same, although I did keep my underwear on; I still had some class. We both climbed under the thick blanket, me far more tentatively than Kate; she just flat-out didn’t care about being naked, which years of living alone would do to anyone. “Top and tail...” She mocked. “If I was a bloke you wouldn’t go top and tail, would you? No, you wouldn’t give a shit about going on the same side.”

I quietly responded, “We’d probably top and tail.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t really know. What if we were to roll over… Unfortunately?”

“Then _obviously_ we fuck,” she said sarcastically. “All you guys bloody think about is sex.” We lay in silence for a moment as I tried to come up with excuses for my line of thinking. Eventually, Kate just said, “Good night. I’ll try not to accidentally bugger you in the night.”


	7. Power

**Early Morning, 25 th June**

“Mark!” Lucy screamed out in terror. “Help me! Please!” She called out to me over and over again, unrelenting in her dread. At the end of an unnatural darkened corridor, she curled up on my university sofa and buried her face in her arms. The storm around her drew closer; the rain washed across the room, the wind whistled all around, and the cracks of thunder and lightning became faster and more aggressive.

I pushed myself through the corridor towards her with all of my energy but nothing seemed to happen. The horrible scene before me got no closer, I couldn’t do anything. My steps became heavier and heavier as the living room in front of me started to fall apart around Lucy. I was completely powerless, nothing I did seemed to change anything. I was being forced to stop moving, trying to fight it only resulted in the force becoming stronger as my movement slowed further. The weight being put on me eventually became too much as I collapsed onto the floor and tried to crawl to Lucy. Bright flashes of lightning illuminated the room around Lucy, but my corridor remained pitch black, I couldn’t even see the floor I was crawling on. The only thing keeping me going was Lucy but it was hopeless. I was crawling against unnatural forces for what felt like an eternity, but I eventually had to give up. My head fell to the floor as I heard Lucy continue to shout out at me as if I’d given up on her. I tried to call out to her but no sound escaped my mouth. I was trapped. Nothing I did had any effect on anything.

I looked at my hands and found a diamond in one of them, one of the special ones. I could see it. I could actually see it. It was an extremely bright blue and perfectly cut. I could feel its power as it glowed, illuminating my body around it but somehow not the floor. It was beautiful.

The world around me seemed to slow down as I could feel the diamond’s power grow. It glowed brighter and brighter as I felt like I was completely losing what little control I had over everything. I tried to push the diamond away from me, but it wouldn’t leave my hand. I couldn’t even move away from it; it was just being forced upon me. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. Its power grew and grew until it finally reached its peak, it exuded an almost blinding light for a few seconds before it erupted, sending lightning all around me and striking straight through Lucy.

I shouted “No!” at the top of my voice as I immediately sat up and forced open my eyes. I was sweating all over and breathing incredibly heavily.

Kate shot up next to me as she shouted “What?! What’s going on?!” I said nothing, I just looked around the room, trying to catch my breath. I was back in the bedroom of the castle. Nothing had changed. I checked my hands; no diamonds in sight. “Mark? Are you ok?”

Again, I didn’t respond. I just sat still, thinking about everything. I was silent for some time, with an increasingly worried Kate staring at me, before I finally said, “I can’t deal with this.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t want any of this. I can’t deal with this. I’m fucking done.”

She seemed slightly lost for words for a couple of seconds. “You mean the diamond thing?”

“I mean everything!” I quickly cut her off and turned my head to face her. Staring straight into her eyes, I said, “The diamonds, the dreams, the fucking medieval, fantasy bollocks we’re in now. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t want this power. I don’t want this responsibility. Who knows what this shit is capable of? I don’t want to hurt anyone because some twat from the past wants me to meddle with shit that shouldn’t be meddled with!”

Kate was clearly taken aback. I hadn’t snapped at her like that before, she clearly wasn’t used to it. Tentatively, she replied, “What makes you think you’re going to hurt people?”

I exhaled and indicated to myself. “Kate. Look at me. I’m a posh little twenty-year-old Maths student from London. How the hell am I meant to be able to control these mystical fucking forces that this King has just dropped on me?”

“Well…” Kate was clearly lost for words, “How do we know this stuff is real anyway? It all sounds like rubbish to me.”

“I know it’s real. It’s too fucking real. And I know that these diamonds aren’t meant to be meddled with. I don’t care what some book says about me. If I use this stuff, then everything is going to go to shit. Even more so than it already has.”

Kate thought for a moment, she really didn’t know what to say. It’s not the kind of topic most people end up talking about in their lives. “This is hard, I understand that, but I don’t think these guys are just going to let you not go through with this, unfortunately.” She could see this wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear so she continued on, making up her words on the spot, “This book is supposed to know everything about this bollocks, right? If it says that you’ll be fine with controlling the diamonds, then I’m sure you will be given time.”

I calmed down a bit and thought for a moment. Looking away from her I said, “I don’t know. I just don’t think I can deal with this.” Kate had nothing else she could say. We sat in silence for a few moments before I let out an exasperated chuckle. She gave a small, uplifted smile and confusedly asked what I was laughing at. Mid-laugh I just replied, “That last bit you said; that was complete bullshit, wasn’t it?”

Kate laughed with me, “Well it’s pretty tough to be reassuring about something that you don’t actually believe in.” We sat in the bed giggling for a short while before Kate put her hand on my shoulder and said, “But seriously, everything will be fine with this. If it’s not true you have nothing to worry about and, if it is true, then this King bloke seems to know what to do with it all.” She could see that I was feeling somehow reassured from that and so said with a smirk, “And either way, I’ll be with you to save your arse from certain death as usual.”

I smiled back at her, “My arse appreciates that.”

We carried on talking for a few hours about the whole situation, we were mostly just complaining about how ridiculous it all was. It helped to talk to someone normal, not someone from the land that time forgot. It seemed crazy that this one place was stuck in this time period. We even entertained the idea that we may have been the tourists in their time rather than us still being in the 21st century but we couldn’t possibly think how that could have happened. Everything was just so abstract, it was incredibly hard to comprehend. Kate seemed to have more trouble with figuring out how she missed this place when living on the island, remarking that she must not have explored nearly as much as she thought she had.

An hour or two passed and we heard the fumbling of keys in our door. It swung open and the King strode in with purpose, shortly followed by two guards. These guards seemed different to the previous ones, possibly higher ranks than the guards we had met the day before. They had stronger looking armour and round iron helmets. Their colours indicated a higher rank too, their colour scheme of a darker blue with gold trimmings (with the same insignia as the other guards) was incredibly distinctive, along with their tall halberds and perfect posture. I figured that they must have been the King’s closest guards or something similarly high ranking. They stood either side of the King, completely stone-faced as he stood towards the entrance of the room. He looked over to us but immediately turned away, covering his eyes as he went, “Good heavens! I apologise milady. I didn’t expect you to be so… Unclothed.” The guards remained unmoved but they didn’t look either, trying to keep professional. I’d completely forgotten about Kate being naked, I’d just gotten used to it.

“Don’t worry about it.” Kate casually replied, not bothering to cover up.

He briefly turned back only to immediately turn away again. “Good God! Cover yourself, woman!”

“What, why?” I could hear Kate starting to get agitated.

“A lady should never be so… Forthcoming with her appearance.”

“And I suppose it’s fine for a bloke, is it?”

I quickly interrupted, “Kate, calm down. Just do as he says.” I remembered what the King had said about what would happen if she caused trouble. She’d definitely lost some social graces from being alone for so long so it seemed up to me to keep her out of trouble.

She shot me an angry glare but I met it with a deeply serious one. Fortunately, she wasn’t so stubborn that she couldn’t see that I meant what I said. She could see that I wouldn’t have asked what I did if I didn’t have a good reason behind it. She sighed and frustratedly said, “Fine,” as she pulled her side of the blanket up and over her.

“Good,” the King said, finally returning his view towards us. “Maybe your lady should show a little more decorum in the future.” I could see Kate seething in my periphery but unfortunately couldn’t do anything about it. “Now get dressed, we have a busy day in front of us.” Without another word, he ushered his guards to follow him and left the room. He wasn’t exactly one for talking. We still didn’t even know his name.

“I want to hit him. I want to hit him in his condescending little face,” said a furious Kate once the door had slammed shut. “Hmph. ‘Your lady.’ He can fuck right off.”

“I know, I’m sorry I had to intervene, but he said that he’d chuck you back in your cell if you caused trouble.” She at least showed some understanding to me. “I’m afraid you may have to conform to the attitudes here. At least for a while.”

“I get it, I know. It’s a different bloody world here. I’m just going to have to get used to the not-so-casual sexism.” She let out a long sigh. “Let’s get dressed then shall we? Wouldn’t want to keep his twatesty waiting.”

We got dressed in the complicated and uncomfortable clothes they had laid out for us, both silently cursing our lack of clean, sensible clothing. It took us nearly half an hour to get ourselves sorted. My clothes, while not particularly complicated overall, had a lot of pieces to it and I had trouble trying to figure whether my shirt and tunic were inside-out or not. Kate’s dress probably required a team of people to put on properly but, between us, we just about managed to get it on her. The lacing made it so tight on her that we thought at the time that they’d got the measurements wrong, but we saw other women around later with similarly sized dresses. It probably would have taken even longer if we’d have bothered to use the corset. Kate understandably felt that that was a bit too far.

Once we’d got the dress on her, I stepped back, smirked and said to Kate, “Well, don’t you look very lady-like.”

She just glared at me, completely unamused. “Let’s just fucking get on with this.”

We exited the room to be greeted by two guards, similarly ranked to the those that were with the King earlier. They sternly ordered us to follow them and we obeyed. We weren’t ones to argue against large men with large halberds. Silently they led us through the castle halls, all decorated with the same red carpet with gold trim that lined the floors of the previous corridors. The arrowslits on the one side leading to the outside world provided just enough light to allow the candles that lined the walls on both sides to remain unlit. It seemed that the halls were just as busy in the day as the night before, we passed similar amounts of servants and guards all seemingly doing the same jobs as before, although with distinctly less judging as Kate and I now finally looked the part.

Moving off the repeating hallways, we turned into an unassuming corridor. No red carpets or decoration of any kind here, simply a square corridor made of dull, grey stone. We reached a huge set of similarly decorated spiral stairs and proceeded to descend into the depths of the castle until we reached a final long and equally dull corridor, dimly lit by a few candles on one wall. At the end was a strong but small wooden door with two huge iron bars across it to lock it in place. Above and either side of the door were two lit torches providing the main sources of light to the corridor as it was completely cut off from the sun. In front of the door stood the King, looking decidedly stressed, with the same two guards he was with when he came to greet us that morning.

“Good, you’re here. Finally.” He said, clearly not understanding the trials and tribulations of a medieval woman’s dress. We walked up to him but were stopped by the guards when we were a few paces before him. He looked over to me, “I see you’ve finally shown your woman how to behave.” I saw Kate curl her fingers into a fist and could feel her anger growing.

“Her name’s Kate,” I said, trying to get across the fact that she didn’t belong to me without actually rocking the boat.

“I’m glad she’s covered herself up at last.” He seemed to be trying to anger Kate on purpose, perhaps to make her cause a scene so that he would have an excuse to lock her away. He clearly didn’t like her very much. “Before we begin, I don’t think we’ve actually been introduced during this whole dreadful business.” He continued, suddenly sounding a fair bit cheerier. “I am King Harold II of House Plantagenet. I know you’re a special one, but I’m yet to know your name.” _Plantagenet_. I knew that name. I wished I’d paid more attention to David when he went on about history at great length.

“I’m Mark. Mark Harding, sir.”

One of the guards hit my shoulder and sternly said, “You shall refer to your King as ‘your majesty’ and nothing else.” I quickly apologised and the King continued.

“Good. Now, good woman, I know that you are Kate,” He directed his attention to her, “But what is your full name, madam?”

Kate quickly and sullenly said, “Kate Thompson.” She paused for a moment before condescendingly saying, “Your Majesty.”

I decided to try and sound slightly posh and from the time, “Begging your pardon, your Majesty, but I think I know your house name, Plantagenet. Are you from England?”

“Very astute, Harding. My family traces its origins back to England and France where we fought for the crown of England nearly 900 years ago. I may tell you more about that later, however. We have more important things to discuss.” At least that ruled out the possibility of us being time travellers, no matter how cool that would have actually been. The King reached into his clothing and pulled out a key attached to a necklace, one he clearly wanted to keep an eye on at all times. He pushed it into the lock on the door which unlocked the two iron bars above the handle. Stepping back, the King gave a knowing nod to the guard closest to him who slid the bars back and pulled the door open towards us. All it revealed was a darkened stairwell made from the same stone as the corridor. The King exchanged some quiet words with his four guards, took one of the torches from the wall, then gestured for us to follow him into the stairwell. I walked past the guards at the door but they stopped Kate.

“Sorry, madam. This is no place for a woman,” one guard said. I looked back at her, she looked furious.

“You fucking what?” She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists, which would have looked more intimidating if she wasn’t in her little dress.

“You’ll have to stay here while his majesty and Master Harding go in,” the guard continued, ignoring her comment as I was ushered in.

Behind us and as loud as she could, Kate shouted, “Fucking hell!”

I followed King Harold, pretending to ignore Kate’s outburst but hoping she hadn’t got herself into trouble. He lit a few of torches on the wall, which due to the narrow nature of the stairwell meant they were worryingly close to burning me every time I passed one. They were few and far between, however, so I mostly had to rely on Harold’s own torchlight to guide me down the long but shallow staircase.

Eventually, the stairwell opened up to an averagely sized circular room. The King spent a little time lighting a small pyre in the centre of the room which, once it got going, lit most of the room up in its flickering glow. It revealed a stone brick floor arranged in circles around the fire with three alcoves in front of me, each with their own plinths in the centre of them. The alcoves had arches of stones around their edges, each with a larger keystone at the top and they descended back in a smooth, spherical shape. Both the central and right-hand plinths were empty but the plinth to the left contained an ornamental sword, standing proud like the sword in the stone.

The long straight blade of the sword was simple but elegant. Its double edge narrowed to a definite and deadly point and seemed designed to be as balanced as possible. The hilt, on the other hand, seemed relatively overdesigned. The circular pommel had a soft blue glow in its centre and was otherwise adorned with modest but interesting detail, the leather around the grip was perfectly spun and the slight zigzag of the blade-angled crossguard was perfectly formed. Electricity, or more appropriately, lightning, was occasionally jolting around the blade, showing its raw power. Behind the blade but still on the plinth was its scabbard. A black leather and gold-adorned sheath purpose-made for the sword. Its attached leather belt was gracefully draped down either side of it.

I recognised the sword. It took me a while to place exactly where but the glowing pommel gave it away. It was the sword from one of my visions. The sword responsible for killing whoever that man was.

“What the fuck?” I said, completely abandoning any semblance of formality with the King.

“Yes,” he began, likely not understanding what I was saying but getting the gist from my tone, “Impressive, isn’t it?”

“What is all of this?”

“Go and look for yourself.”

I did as I was told and cautiously moved towards the sword. As I approached, I noticed the keystone above had an engraving on it. It read:

The Sword of Light

May it strike down our foes

I moved over to the centre alcove, the inscription above read:

The Shield of Control

May it change the will of those who stand against us

The right alcove’s inscription read:

The Amulet of Sight

May it guide us to a better future

The sword, the shield, and the amulet. The three artefacts I’d seen in my visions. The three parts to the design on all of the guard’s armour. They were all too real as it turned out, although two of them were missing from their homes.

“These…” I hesitantly began as I stepped back from the plinths, “These are for the three things. You built this for the three artefacts?”

“Our ancestors did. When these were found, they decided that we required a safe place to store them.” He began to look at me expectantly, “Take the sword, Harding.”

I looked over at the sword, lightning still firing out all over it. “You’re joking.” In my mind, there was no way it would be safe to touch.

“No, Harding.” He suddenly became very intense. “You must prove you are special. If you are who I think you are, you will be fine.”

“And what if I’m not who you think I am?”

He thought for a moment, “Do not worry. You will be ok,” he said unconvincingly. “Take the sword.”

I stared at the sword, its imposing figure pushing me away from it. I did not want to do this. I was always told to be respectful of electricity, although school didn’t have the foresight to teach us about ancient magical artefacts. Being ushered forwards by the King standing behind me, I made tentative steps towards the sword, its power seeming more terrifying with every step I took. I stepped directly in front of it and glanced over its intricate carvings along the crossguard and pommel; it was exquisitely crafted to such an insane level. The detailing was incredible.

“What _actually_ happens if I grab it and I’m just a normal schmuck?” I asked the King, not entirely expecting a straight answer. I didn’t keep my eye off the sword though; I wasn’t letting it out of my sight.

It took him far too long to come up with a response, “Nothing. You simply will not be able to pick it up.”

I didn’t believe him, but the four guards outside meant that I wasn’t in much of a position to argue. I reached for the chest-height handle and hovered over it for a moment. My own mortality was staring me in the face, a feeling I was getting quite familiar with by now. This was different in one very important way though; I’d never been the one to decide when I was going to potentially die. All of my regrets and things I had yet to do in my life came rushing through my mind. I thought about how much I regretted going off on holiday, how much I regretted not revising for my GCSE English exam and then, knowing full well they’d find out anyway, lying to my parents about getting an A on it, even how much I regretted stealing a pound from my mum’s purse to buy some sweets when I was nine. I was still yet to go to Rome like I’d always wanted, I hadn’t finished my degree yet – I didn’t even know if I’d passed second year by this point – and at the very least I wanted to see Lucy and my family one last time. All of these thoughts and more went through me as I held my hand over the sword, violently shaking from the nerves. I was standing there for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably just a minute or two, before I gave up on stalling.

I muttered “Christ alive” under my breath, closed my eyes and grasped the handle as hard as I could while shouting in fear. Nothing happened. I stood there in silence for a while, confused and breathing heavily. Still holding onto the handle, I inched open my eyes and found that I was no longer in the chamber. I was standing in the middle of a large forest, the dim light of the sunset just about illuminating the ground through the large trees. I was still holding the sword in place but the plinth had disappeared. I lowered the sword down to my side, noticing that it was incredibly light for its size. The world seemed calm; the air was still and silent, there was no movement about me whatsoever.

I looked behind me to find a less-than-calm scene. Kate, the King, two of his guards, David, and I were all frozen in place while fighting off several monsters with another of the King’s guards dead on the floor. I could simply walk between all of the motionless bodies, during which I managed to see how terrible my appearance had gotten throughout all of this. I was covered in cuts and bruises, and my (or in fact, David’s) clothes were ripped in several places and incredibly dirty.

I seemed scared of something. I looked over to see just what was terrifying my frozen form and saw a figure. His long, dark hair seemed to be blowing in the wind and the expression over his middle-aged face showed both anger and joy as he charged towards me. His clothes looked like they were once incredibly expensive, but time had taken its toll and the purple colours of the overcoat and trousers had faded, every garment having a few cuts around it. My hand was moving to pull the fancy sword out of its scabbard but, judging by my facial expression, I wasn’t confident that it would help.

I looked over to the King. He was falling backwards and holding his hand over one of his eyes with the end of an arrow sticking through the gap in his fingers. Blood was frozen in place as it erupted from his wound and covered his hand. His bloodstained iron sword was falling out of his hands as he fell. It was a horrible sight that I had to look away from. His guards were gathered around him, trying to protect him from harm but not holding up so well themselves

Kate, in her own practical leather outfit rather than the clothes supplied by our current hosts, initially seemed like her immobile form was on top of things, but I could see fear entering her eyes as she was glancing over at the mysterious figure in front of me while she was fighting off a zombie and trying to protect a petrified but still standing David. I remembered how much I missed my friends. This was both a good and bad thing to witness; on the one hand, it looked like me and David would be reunited. On the other, the circumstances looked particularly bleak. None of the previous visions had come true yet so I chose to push the thought to the back of my mind. I got the feeling that these ancient artefacts were just playing tricks on me.

The whole scene was horrible. I didn’t know whether it was a vision of the future or just a sick game the sword was somehow playing on me, but I couldn’t stand it. I dropped the sword and just let it fall to the soft ground. It hit the grassy floor with a surprising _clang_ of metal hitting stone and the whole scene suddenly disappeared, revealing the chamber I was in previously. I was staring silently at the empty plinth, the sword still at my feet, devoid of the electricity once flowing through it.

The King shouted out to me, “Harding! Can you hear me?!” I quickly spun my head around to look at him, I found he was joined by one of his guards and looking concerned. He breathed a sigh of relief, “Oh thank you. Thank the Lord. I thought your mind was gone.” I said nothing, but he continued to explain his side of the events anyway. When I grabbed the sword, I did exactly what I had done in my vision, but in real life. He saw me wander around, stare deeply into nothing and nearly collide with several walls. He got worried, so he called back for one of his guards to join him in case things turned sour. As magic-led events had gone for me in the past, I thought that this one was rather tame. No less harrowing for its calm nature, however.

I stared at him for a moment, bemused by the whole affair. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced. Eventually, I simply said, “Bloody Nora,” and then told him about my vision. I neglected to tell him about his role in it, I thought that him and his guard might have taken it as some sort of threat and dealt with me before the threat could manifest itself. He thought about what I had said for a moment before disregarding the vision as an impossibility.

“Thank the Lord you were able to hold the sword,” The King said after a moment, relief flowing through his words, “I was feeling awfully worrisome.”

I agreed with him without thinking as I tentatively picked the sword up off the floor, thankfully not resulting in another vision. All of a sudden what he said hit me as I realised what he had said before I first touched the sword. “You were _worried_?!” I asked, starting to feel angered but attempting to keep calm. “You said that it would all be fine.”

He quickly realised the mistake he had made and weakly attempted to rectify it. “You never can be quite sure what will happen with these things.”

“I could have died.” I stared the fumbling ruler down as I said, “Couldn’t I?”

“Well. I…” He couldn’t think of anything to say. “Yes.” He conceded. “If you weren’t who you are, you may have died.”

Relieved he was finally being honest with me, but still incredibly angry, I said, “I could have died. You just fucking stood there and encouraged me. You selfish motherfucker!” I raised my voice and pointed the sword at him from across the chamber, making the King’s guard ready himself for trouble.

“I had to!” The King snapped and stepped forward. “If I had told you the truth, you wouldn’t have gone through with it!” The guard strode towards me in an act of intimidation.

“Too fucking right I wouldn’t have! I don’t even want to _be_ here, let alone risking my life to satisfy some power-crazed king in his ridiculous castle!”

The guard forced his hand towards the sword and grasped it across a couple of my fingers and a part of the exposed handle. The King yelled at him to stop but the guard didn’t pay attention and began to push the sword away from its focus on the King. I tried to resist but he was much stronger than I.

In a sudden jolt, his body stiffened. His grip tightened but his eyes locked onto mine with fear. His teeth gritted and he let out a strained groan. As I saw bolts of lightning move from the handle and up his arm, I realised what was happening.

I tried to pull my hand away from his, but his grip was so tight that he was almost completely unmoved. He couldn’t open his mouth to scream, but his eyes showed that he wanted to. I brought my other hand around, grabbed his arm, and tried to push it away with all of my strength. I managed to force his hand off the sword. He immediately fell to the ground and finally let out the shriek that had built up within him.

The King darted over to his guard. “Ingram! Are you ok?!” The guard reduced his noises to simple groans, but nodded.

I dropped the sword, letting it clatter loudly to the ground once more. This wasn’t good. I didn’t want to be in control of something this dangerous.

“If this is what your sword causes,” I began, indicating both to the sword on the ground and the slowly recovering guard, “I don’t want to be a part of this. I can’t help you.”

“It’s not just me. The world needs you.” The King’s comment was met with silence from both of us. I stepped towards the King, intrigued but scared.

“What do you mean?”

He stood slowly but shuffled about and tried to regain his calm composure. “I was not going to inform you of this until later, but I suppose I must now.” The King looked to the ground, resigning himself to tell me what was going on. “There’s a threat to our world looming and we can’t fight it alone. We need you.” He proceeded to tell me that the monsters that roamed the world did not belong on the surface, they were from the aforementioned ‘Nether’. Someone was using the missing Shield of Control to build up a vast army of them in order to control the world. This person apparently could only control the shield so, unfortunately, the King felt that I was the only person that could stop him. Brilliant.

He told me that he didn’t know what the villain’s motives were, but I didn’t believe him, he was hiding something. The way he glossed over who this person was or how he got hold of the shield just didn’t seem right to me. Presumably, the shield was kept in the same chamber as the sword until it was stolen, I couldn’t work out how this person would have got in, considering the key that was needed was always kept on the King’s person as far as I could tell.

“Will you help us?” The King asked, a slight pleading tone creeping into his voice. He stretched out his arm towards me, his eyes staring into mine, hoping that my hand would meet his.

I thought for a while, leaving his hand hanging in the air. All I wanted to do was go home, I didn’t want to save the world or be a part of some crazy legend. I just wanted to go back to England and continue on with my life. I couldn’t see a way out of this though. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” I really didn’t, it seemed to me like I’d die from this shield-wielding arsehole either way, so I thought I’d at least put up a fight. “If I help you, can you help me get back home? To England.”

“We will do everything in our power.”

“Then I will _try_ and help you.” I grabbed his hand and strongly shook it. “No promises that I won’t just make everything worse though.”

The King smirked, the first time I’d seen him show any sort of positive emotion, and said, “Let us see what you can do.”

I carefully took and wore the sword’s scabbard before the King and his guard, only barely recovered, led me out of the chamber and locked the door behind us. We encountered a very bored and frustrated Kate watching our exit.

“Enjoy your fucking man-time?” She didn’t sound particularly happy.

Slightly lost for words, I stuttered and just said, “Not really. It was pretty horrible.” She almost seemed to be happy about this. “I got this though.” I drew the sword a little out of its sheathe, slowly and in such a way that I didn’t look threatening to the guards. She let out a little gasp and reached out to have a closer look at it. I quickly pushed it back, “Woah! Don’t touch it. There’s a very real chance you can suffer from a severe case of… Death.”

“That’s just not fair. How come-”

“We really do not have time for this,” the King interrupted Kate, something I wouldn’t have advised. She glared at him as he ignored her completely. “Harding. We have time constraints. We must move quickly.”


	8. Training

**Early Afternoon, 25 th June **

After I was told to keep the sword sheathed at all costs, we were led by the King and his entourage up the spiral stairs and back through many of the same hallways we had been through earlier. Both Kate and I stayed silent as we were guided to an unknown place for a reason we had yet to be told. The King seemed to like to keep things mysterious. The sword was becoming incredibly frustrating as the blade’s side knocked against my leg with every step; I briefly started to hold the handle in place to stop this but a stern look from one of the guards soon put a stop to that. Along the way, the King quietly sent one of his guards off to get something. I asked him what but was completely ignored. Kate smirked, quietly happy that I knew what it was like.

We eventually realised, however, that we were heading back towards the cells we had begun our strange journey from. This worried us; the last thing we wanted to do was be back there. I glanced over to Kate as she turned her eyes towards me, our eyes meeting with mutual concern. Walking down the long corridor full of the familiar cells on both sides, we approached an intimidating iron door. This door was completely lacking in any sign of comfort, there was no window to speak of, only a slit that could be opened from the outside

Nervously I asked, “What are we doing here?” No one responded until I remembered to finish with, “Your majesty.”

“There is no need to worry, Harding.” The King began, “We are simply here to test your powers.” This put me slightly at ease, but also made me worry about how we were going to do such a thing. I had very little idea what my ‘powers’ were or how I was supposed to be able to use them. I sincerely hoped he didn’t expect me to just be a natural.

We reached the unlocked and slightly ajar door. The King’s closest guard it pushed with some effort, holding it open as the rest of us walked through. This cell looked very similar to the cell that I was all too familiar with, although the lack of any window in the door meant that no light from the corridor could come in and no window to the outdoors meant no natural light either. Without the clearly temporarily lantern placed on the floor to the left of the room and the open door, the cell would be in complete darkness. It must have usually been used as a punishment for the more unruly captives. The walls were lined with scratch marks of varying legibility. Some almost formed letters (although never words), while others were the crazed carvings of evidently inhumanely treated prisoners, devoid of the little human contact they got in the other cells. It was a haunting place but, unfortunately, one that the King seemed to want me to remain for now.

At the far end of the room stood a tall but narrow wooden table with a small piece of scrap iron placed on top of two small wooden blocks. It was barely lit by the two small light sources, but I wouldn’t have been able to work out what it was for even if it was perfectly lit by a stadium floodlight.

King Harold was waiting at the door, watching for the guard he’d sent off to return. Without saying a word, the guard came back and handed the King a small wooden box; a box that I was far too used to seeing. The diamonds.

Without thinking I immediately said, “No. I’m not doing this if it involves those bloody things.”

The King forced the box in front of me and sternly said, “Harding. You have the sword, you can use the diamonds. You can control their power.”

“How do you know that? Some ancient book said so? How do you know they weren’t just having a laugh when they were writing it?”

The frustrated monarch couldn’t give any answer other than, “It has been right so far, has it not?”

I realised that this was completely true. Everything it had said about me had been true up to that point, it was all just less graceful than as it seemed when written down.

Not having an answer to that, I reluctantly grabbed the box from the King and started to psych myself up for my first attempt at using the sword. I was told that the book didn’t have a lot of detail about how the powers were used, but the idea was the lightning was supposed to fire out of the tip of the blade in the direction I pointed it.

I was about to have a try when the King suddenly turned to one of his guards and said, “Escort the woman out of here. It’s too crowded and she will certainly be a hindrance.”

“Fucking what?” Kate shouted as the guard moved towards her. “Why am I even here? You wankers have done nothing but sideline me this entire time! ‘No place for a woman.’ ‘She’ll be a hindrance.’ You can fuck right off!”

“Kate!” I snapped, simply wanting to concentrate on the task at hand. “Can you please just go?”

She glared at me, shocked that I took the King’s side on the matter. I didn’t waver on my stance, however. “Fine! Show me where my chamber is, I’ll take my distracting fucking gender elsewhere.” She powered out of the room as the guard followed her to take her to our chamber. I realised I could have handled that better, but I was incredibly stressed and couldn’t deal with Kate arguing with the King about why she should have been there. I would have preferred her to be there but not like that.

Pushing the guilt to the back of my mind I prepared once again to use the sword. As I drew it, the King and his entourage stepped back as far behind me as they could, which wasn’t particularly far in the relatively small cell. I held the box of diamonds in my right hand and aimed the tip of the lightweight sword at the scrap iron with my left. As I took a deep breath, I prepared to open the box, manoeuvring my hand so that my thumb was pressed against the lid.

I muttered the words, “Fuck me,” as I flicked the lid off the box, the clacking of the wood hitting the floor echoing around the small room. The bright blue light flooded out of the box and blinded me as usual but, after a few seconds, it faded. There was no pain and I wasn’t transported to another time or place. The light weakened and revealed the same cell I was in before, but with everything covered in a blue tint. I stood perfectly still, expecting everything to go tits up at any moment. When nothing happened, I kept my body still but turned my head to look at the King to my right. He looked slightly surprised at something and stepped back, while not saying a word. Looking at the guards caused similar reactions, I couldn’t work out why but I was too afraid to ask, just in case speaking triggered something. Anything was possible where these diamonds were concerned.

I glanced over to the box of diamonds I was still holding and realised they were no longer glowing. For the first time, I could see that there were three small diamonds in this box, all perfectly alike in their appearance. They looked exactly like a scaled down version of the diamond I had seen in my dream.

After half a minute of nothing happening, I looked back towards the scrap iron and started to pathetically shake my sword at it, hoping something would happen. Nothing did. This was getting frustrating. The blue tint slowly faded from my vision over the next minute until I could see everything in its normal colours. I sighed, sheathed my sword, and put the lid on the box containing the muted diamonds. I supposed that I would have to wait some time before I could try again.

A brief look at the King and his guards showed serious relief. “Your eyes,” the King began, pausing to put into words what he had just seen, “They were blue. Completely blue! I’ve never seen anything like it.” The guards still looked uneasy but they tried not to show it.

A bit confused – perhaps rather dimly – I replied, “What do you mean? My eyes _are_ blue.”

“No, you misunderstand me. Your eyes were _completely_ blue. Each eye was wholly blue.” That explained the unnerving looks they gave me. “Did you feel any power from the diamonds?”

“I think so?” I couldn’t really tell at the time. It seemed to me like everything was the same but blue, though I could feel some indistinct sense of power. “I’m not really sure though. I couldn’t get anything to happen.”

“Time, Harding. You will get there.” He thought for a moment, “Do not take too much time, however. We can’t take too long.”

This was starting to sound ominous, “Sir…” I began, causing one of the guards to start glaring at me. “ _Shit._ Your majesty.” The guard simply nodded. “What exactly do you expect of me?”

He took the box off me and handed it to one of the guards who marched off to store it somewhere safe. “All in good time, Harding. You will join us for tonight’s feast.” He was about to leave the room when he remembered to say, “As long as she behaves herself, you can bring your woman as well.” I weakly muttered her name in some vague attempt at a response, not loud enough for them to notice, but it was enough for me to feel as if I’d helped her plight in some way.

The King indicated to one of the guards, “Take him to his chamber. He is allowed to use the training rooms to work on his likely lacking fighting ability if he wishes as well. We will fetch him for the feast later.”

The guard nodded, trying to remember everything he had just been told. Without another word, the King left with the other guard, leaving the one remaining guard in the cell with me about to take me to my chamber, where a likely very pissed off Kate would be waiting for me. I was instructed to leave the sword in the cell where it would be locked away safely before we headed off.

We approached the door of the chamber to find the guard that had taken Kate back standing to attention outside. I was let in and instructed that I’d have to knock on the door and be escorted to wherever I wanted to go if I wanted to leave. With that, he slammed the door shut and locked it.

I found Kate sitting in one of the chairs on the far side of the room.

“Should I go?” She sarcastically began. “My spare X chromosome is _clearly_ just going to get in the way.” I knew this would be coming, and it wasn’t entirely undeserved, but I didn’t have anything planned for a way out. I decided to improvise.

“Kate.” I paused, giving myself time to think as a very expectant Kate scowled at me. “I’m sorry for snapping at you, but you have to understand how bloody stressful this whole thing is.”

She stood up and took a few steps towards me. “I get that, Mark. Could you just try to not be such a fucking twat?”

I was starting to get a bit frustrated, “ _I_ should try not to be a twat? How about you with your bloody shouting matches with the King? I’m dealing with some ancient magic bollocks and your only concern is sexism? I’m afraid there’s _slightly_ more important things going on! I nearly killed someone!”

She looked incredibly offended, likely having not listening to the actual words that I’d said, and came back with, “You have no idea what it’s like here for me. No one even acknowledges my existence unless I’m doing something only a man is supposed to do.”

We went on like this for a long time. I had no idea how long, but after using as many words as possible to throw the same two points at each other, we simply ran out of things to say. I decided I needed to get away from her, so I took the King up on his offer of the training rooms. I bashed on the door to get the attention of the two guards outside and demanded I be taken to the training rooms, leaving Kate in the room by herself.

I was in a horrible mood. On the way over to the training rooms in the lower section of the castle, near the cells again, I had some time to think. While I didn’t necessarily think I was wrong with what I said to Kate, I did sincerely regret the way I said it. I certainly could have been more understanding of her struggles, especially since she was the entire reason that I was alive at this point.

I decided to push the thought to the back of my mind and focus on smashing the shit out of a dummy soldier in the training room. Made of straw, six were lined up in front of the far wall propped up by a wooden cross and wearing a thin length of dirty white cloth to keep everything together. I was given a wooden sword to train with, lest I accidentally hurt someone with a real one. They were clearly ignoring the fact that I had been given an ancient sword imbued with lightning that same day.

The room wasn’t particularly large but it served its purpose well enough. It was circular in shape with the six dummies set up along one half of the circle opposite the small wooden entrance. Straw left over from old dummies was scattered across the floor and had been gathered into small piles on the sides. There was a small rack off to the right containing a few more wooden swords and torches lined the walls to provide the light; it was certainly less glamorous than the rest of the castle. Without much hesitation, I trudged over to one of the central dummies and smashed my sword down on its straw shoulder.

Half an hour passed and I was still going at the dummy with full force, angrily hacking away at it with a distinct lack of skill until there was very little straw left on it. The guard that escorted me had gotten bored of watching me completely fail to be graceful so he had gone outside to wait for me to be done with my stress relief. After what I thought were a particularly vicious set of strikes against the target, I stepped back, completely out of breath, and observed the damage done. There was straw strewn all over the floor at the base of the wooden cross and the cloth was barely hanging onto the dummy itself, it was hanging onto the construction by a thread and was nearly touching the floor.

“Fucking hell,” I heard a voice behind me say. “What did the poor guy do to deserve that?” I looked behind me, Kate was at the door grinning. She’d changed into decidedly more sensible clothing, relatively similar to the clothes I had been given.

I quietly said, “Oh, hi. Yeah, he’s… Suffered somewhat.”

She walked over to me and said, “I got the guard to take me here because I wanted to apologise. I know you’ve got a lot of shit going on right now that I can never understand.”

She was about to continue but I quickly interrupted her with the words I had been thinking about over this time, “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lashed out like that; I’m just really bloody stressed right now. You’ve got your own shit to deal with though, you don’t need me standing here and dismissing your issues with this place.”

“Hug it out?” She opened her arms and smiled at me. I dropped the wooden sword and gave her a hug, “Thanks, I’ll try to be less of a whiny bitch in the future.”

I pulled back, grinned and said, “And I’ll try to be less of a self-centred dick.”

“Deal.”

We sat on the hard wooden floor and chatted for a while after that. I got her up to date on everything that happened when she left the cell when I was trying to use the sword. She just made a joke about my inability to ‘finish’ and laughed to herself. To be fair, these stories were becoming less and less interesting as more started to happen. When I first saw one of the diamonds, it was all we could think about, but by this point it was almost part of our normal lives.

After a while, Kate jumped up excitedly and held out her hand towards me as she said, “Right, get up. I briefly saw your sword ‘skills’ so I’m going to teach you how to use one of these things properly.”

I grabbed her hand and she hauled me up as I half-jokingly said, “It can’t be _that_ hard surely? You just aim the pointy bit at the bad people.”

She chuckled condescendingly, indicated for me to pick my wooden sword up off the floor, and got one of her own from the rack. We stood near the centre of the circular room, but with a few feet in between us, and she began the lesson.

“First of all, you’re going to want a proper stance, one where you won’t get knocked off your feet if a fly coughs on you. Do as I do.” She held the sword with her right hand and kept her left behind her, her legs were far apart and facing slightly diagonally to give her balance, and she held the sword forward and at the ready. I tried to copy her stance as best as I could. She could tell I looked slightly confused about the stance, it looked nothing like the kind of thing I had seen in films and on television, so she went on to explain it a bit. “Always keep your sword ready to block any attack at any angle but don’t go jumping the gun on your blocks. Keep your free hand behind your back if it’s not being used, it’s just another target if you’re leaving it exposed. I found that out the hard way.” She dropped her stance to raise her free arm, pull back her sleeve and showed me a large and gruesome scar on her forearm, proving her point quite succinctly, before returning to her stance and continuing on. “Keeping your legs like this should help you stay balanced if you get hit from most angles, and you should be able to readjust fairly rapidly if needed.” I stood in place and nodded along; she was suddenly taking a strangely serious tone, so I felt like I really had to pay attention. She watched me adjust my stance a small amount before she gave me a small nod and said, “That’ll do. Now try to attack me and pay attention to what I do.”

I obliged and tentatively moved forwards, attempting to keep the stance up but likely not being very successful. She seemed to sense my hesitation and so said, “Really go for it, don’t worry about hurting me.” I paused for a moment before attempting a swing from right to left as fast as I could. She immediately brought her sword around, hit mine away then moved forward a step, grabbed my sword wielding arm with her free hand and went to stab my stomach with her sword, stopping an inch away from me. Everything happened so fast, it was genuinely terrifying. She let go and stepped back but I stayed in the same position for a while, completely motionless, trying to make sense of what she had just done

“What the fuck just happened?” I said as I regained my composure.

Kate chuckled lightly and said, “Years of living on this sodding island happened. But you just learned an important lesson, don’t make an attack if it will leave you vulnerable. It’s just not worth it.”

“Yeah. Too right...” Just before Kate was about to give me another instruction, I asked her, “Why do we need to know how to duel anyway? Won’t we be fighting those monsters?”

She looked slightly disappointed at my poor attempt to get out of training, “Learning this will improve your sword fighting skills in general. Plus, you never know what you’ll face. I’ve seen a few skeletons with swords in the past and, with everything that’s going on, I want you to know how to handle a sword properly.” I reluctantly agreed with her and we continued on.

We spent the next hour or so training. I tried blocking some of her attacks, usually unsuccessfully, and attacking her some more. Over the course of the practice, I could feel myself getting better. I was nowhere near her level but, after being bruised several times by her wooden sword, I started to get better self-preservation instincts and I even got one or two light hits in on her. Kate taught me about using my legs and my free hand to catch my opponent off guard and sometimes just grabbing their weapon-wielding hand if possible. The fighting was absolutely nothing like I expected it to be, it was up close and messy rather than just hitting each other’s swords.

After the hour had passed, we were interrupted by one of the guards coming into the room to inform us that the King’s feast would be ready shortly and we had to be readied. We finished up, put the swords back, and followed him to the castle’s bathing rooms.

Kate and I were separated off and bathed to royal standards. I was washed head to toe which, while incredibly necessary, was very awkward when being done by the King’s servants.

My patchy beard was also shaved and we were both put into fine clothes. Mine were fairly similar to those that I had been wearing previously, but the tunic was a dark green and the clothes were generally of a higher quality and adorned with gold-laced designs. Kate was put into a tight-fitting red dress, similar to that which she had worn previously.

It was hard to imagine what to expect from this feast. I had relied on Kate for any historical insights but she came up blank as well. We only knew that we had to try and blend in with the others.


	9. Feast

**Evening, 25 th June**

After a minute or two of being escorted through the winding corridors and down the narrow and steep stairs of the castle, we reached a huge hallway. The ceiling towered way above us and was full of intricate carvings and details. Halfway down this hallway sat two sets of nearly identical huge wooden doors. One set seemed to lead to the outside – judging by the howl of the wind coming through the gaps around each door – and the other to a room simply known as the ‘Hall’. The doors were made up of vertical planks held together with a few iron bars, flared at the ends for decoration. We could hear the sound of raucous laughter and the voices of men attempting in vain to be heard over each other.

The two guards pushed open the heavy doors and stood to attention at either side of the large archway. This revealed the expansive great hall of the castle. Half of the room was taken up by two simple long tables with wooden benches on the outside. Some of the castle’s servants seemed to be eating here off wooden dishes. The other half was raised up a step and two long taller tables ran parallel to each other towards the far end of the room, the chairs on the outside facing in. This led to the perpendicularly placed long table at the far end of the room, with the chairs on the outside facing towards the entrance. In the centre of the room stood a proud stone hearth, the outside of which was covered in intricate detail, most of it revolving around sword, shield and amulet imagery. The two opposite sides of the hearth had large openings exposing the roaring fire within. The chimney attached to the hearth raised up through the arched ceiling, the wooden beams of which ran across the ceiling to the centre.

The far tables were full of nobles eating off silver plates with silver knives but no forks, which I thought was odd. The King, now donning an ostentatious golden crown, was sat in the middle of the slightly higher table at the very end of the room facing at the doorway. The eight religious crosses along the top of his crown glistened in the candle light, each adorned with various precious stones including garnets, amethysts and even some large (normal) diamonds. On the King’s right was a very regal looking young woman and an empty seat. The two seats on his left were also empty. Those three empty seats at this table were the only empty seats in the room at all.

The King beckoned us over, so we awkwardly shuffled through the centre of the room. As we walked past the servants’ area, we noticed their food consisted mostly of brown bread with small amounts of beef and pork. They, like everyone in the room, were eating mostly with their hands, only occasionally using their knives. The nobles further up the room had significantly more bountiful feasts, their silverware crammed full of chicken, beef, pork, chopped purple carrots and peas, each with a small loaf of white bread on the side. There was a ridiculous amount of food on each plate and the King had even more.

The two empty seats adjacent to each other had places laid out but no food and the third was completely empty altogether. We approached the King, unsure of how exactly to behave in this situation, and he instructed us to sit in the two laid out seats, I was to sit next to the King and Kate was to sit in the next seat over, which she reluctantly agreed to. We stayed as quiet as possible during all of this so as to not make a social faux pas and embarrass ourselves. The King motioned for servants to bring some food out for us, giving me significantly more than Kate. I could see Kate was irritated but I calmed her by quietly whispering to her that I’d try to give her some of mine, it was far too much for me anyway.

One by one, each servant carrying a different portion of the meal entered the room, stood in front of us and slowly placed the food on our plates and poured a form of ale into our metal cups, described to us as ‘fresh ale’. It was cloudy and didn’t taste as alcoholic as those at home, though I was never much of an ale drinker in the first place. It had allegedly been made that day for this feast, however.

We both sat still, watched this happen and, after everything was put down, waited for a cue to start, in case we were supposed to do something before eating. This was met with the stare of a very confused king to our right who, while shovelling food into his mouth, indicated to us that we should start my feast and Kate’s snack. We both obliged and tentatively started to eat. Since we weren’t used to using our hands in a relatively formal situation, we tried to be careful not to make a mess; Kate doubly so as she quickly realised she was meant to be more ‘ladylike’ to not cause a stir.

The King turned to me part way through the meal and said, “Harding, you’ve yet to meet my daughter, Mary.” He leant back and spoke to the young woman sitting next to him, “Mary, this is Mark Harding. The one who can control the diamonds.”

The princess’ face lit up as she leant towards me, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Harding.” She said excitedly, “I’ve been told a lot about you.”

Trying to be charming and formal I replied with, “The pleasure is all mine, your highness.”

With utmost composure, she smiled and said, “We simply must talk properly once we are done here. I would surely like to get to know the hero of Sarthe.”

“Sarthe?” I replied. I knew that name from somewhere but I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard it. A common theme for me it seemed.

The King interjected, “Surely you know the name of the city you are in?”

“It would have helped if I had actually been told it.” As I was speaking, I subtly pushed my plate towards Kate and tried to put my body in Harold and Mary’s lines of sight so that Kate could quietly nick some food off it.

The King thought for a moment about what else he hadn’t told me during the past two days’ events. “We appear to have overestimated your knowledge of the area. We will clearly need to have a discussion about where we are.”

Possibly trying to change the topic, Mary spoke up before I could reply with a sarcastic comment. She looked past me and at Kate, who was fortunately done taking food from my plate. Struggling to be heard over the other boisterous dinner guests, she shouted, “Who are you then, Madam? It is very rare for women to eat in the Hall with everyone, especially at the high table.”

Kate swallowed the food she was eating and hurriedly said, “Kate Thompson.” She was about to take another bite from her own plate when she remembered to say, “Your Highness.” The princess looked at Kate expectantly, wanting her to elaborate. She soon noticed this and continued. “I’m a friend of Mark’s. I helped him live on this island before we were taken to this castle.”

I interrupted Kate to say, “That’s really a massive understatement. She’s saved my life so many times and began to teach me how to survive here before we knew there was civilisation here.” I looked back towards Kate and smiled, to which she gave a half-hearted smile back, before I looked back at Mary, “She’s basically the entire reason I’m still here.”

Mary looked surprised, “Well, Kate, you sound like quite an extraordinary woman.”

Kate simply shrugged and said, “One of us has to be competent at least.” Both the King and his daughter looked at me in mild shock, presumably thinking that I’d chastise Kate for such a comment. I just lightly chuckled.

The table went silent with that comment and we carried on with our food until the King turned to me to say, “I hear you two have been making use of the guards’ training rooms. Were you teaching her to defend herself in combat?”

I was facing away from Kate so I couldn’t see her reaction, but I could somehow feel that she was annoyed by that comment. I pulled back my sleeve to show him one of the bruises she’d given me during the training and said, “She was showing me a few things. She’s got a lot more experience with swords after all.” I assumed that the King wanted Kate to be bad at something ‘manly’, so I thought that I’d set him straight. “She’s certainly the better fighter between us.”

Harold looked away from me and into the rest of the room, sighed, and thought for a moment before turning back to me, “She will have to show me what she can do some day. I’m sure it would be quite a spectacle.”

Kate held back from answering and just focused on eating her food so as to not cause a fuss.

We finished our meals but the evening continued on, our drinks being topped up throughout. As a result, the room became louder and louder as the blustering nobles got ever tipsier from the weak ale. The King and his daughter remained dignified throughout, however. Kate and I tended to talk with each other rather than to the King and Mary, as did they, only occasionally breaking the social barrier to have a very short conversation, usually about something mildly sexist or just frightfully dull. We decided not to get into asking about the island or the city here, we felt that it wasn’t quite the right place to get into a properly serious conversation like that.

After a small silence, Kate leant over to me and whispered, “I think that that princess is into you, mate.”

I glanced over to Mary, who was attempting to look like she was listening to her father’s conversation. Her eyes briefly flicked over to me and she gave a small smile. Looking back at Kate I said, “You think so?”

“Oh yeah,” she replied, grinning. “Every girl loves a man from the future who can bend ancient magic to their will.” I let out a small laugh before she continued, “But seriously, I reckon she’s definitely going to want to ‘get to know you better’ soon.”

I thought for a moment about the whole encounter. “I don’t see it,” I concluded. “Even if she did, I wouldn’t do anything about it; I’m still holding onto the vague hope that we get back home someday so that I can be with Lucy again.” I regretted mentioning Lucy as I immediately became distracted as thoughts of her drifted through my mind.

I snapped out of these thoughts when Kate, oblivious to my mild distress, continued with her half-joke. “You’d deny a princess? You’ve got some balls, Mark. If I was a princess, I wouldn’t accept a no for anything I asked. I wouldn’t take any shit. It would be fucking great.”

“And you would end up with the fastest fucking rebellion in history.”

“It would be totally worth it.” We both laughed and continued our ridiculous conversation to a point where we decided that if either one of us were to be born a prince or princess, we’d both probably only make it to 15 years old at the most before we were murdered for being really bloody demanding.

Despite the medieval setting, it actually ended up being quite a good night. It was certainly the best night I’d had since arriving on the island. It had to end at some point, however. As the various nobles trickled out of the room, the servants started to clear the tables of plates and cups. The nobles seemed to take their knives with them, which confused me until I was informed that guests usually brought their own.

All four of us moved outside the hall and were about to go to our respective chambers when Mary suddenly spoke up. “Harding! You simply must come with me. I want to hear all about you and your powers.” She gave me a big smile and stared at me, keenly awaiting an answer.

I glanced over to Kate, who simply gave me a quick nod, indicating that I should go with Mary. “That sounds good to me, your Highness.”

“Excellent.” She said excitedly, “Follow me.” She smiled and walked down the hallway towards her room. I quickly followed, briefly glancing back at Kate who winked at me as she left for our chamber.

I caught up to Mary and her two-guard escort and walked alongside her as she started to make light conversation, mostly talking about the feast we had just had. When we reached her room, a servant unlocked the door and pushed it open. We both quickly walked inside and the servant was about to follow before Mary stopped him.

“We would be alone for now,” she said with more composure than I’d ever seen in a person. “I will send for you when you are needed.” He performed a small bow and obliged as Mary closed the door.

Where I thought that the room that I had been given was grand, this was on a whole other level. It was only slightly bigger than my room, but everything inside was much grander. The bed’s headboard was even bigger with more intricate carvings all over it. The bed itself was much larger as well and there was an entire living room’s worth of fancy chairs on the other side, with a small table in the centre of them and other chairs scattered seemingly randomly around the room. The fireplace was larger than ours too, and emblazoned with what I could only assume was the Plantagenet crest; the three familiar lions it comprised of staring down at me from across the room. I was in awe as I entered and Mary seemed to sense this as she tried to hurry me along to two chairs facing each other in the far corner of the room.

I sat down at the same time as she did. I was still staring around the room, trying to take in all of the detail, as she enthusiastically leant forward and asked me, “Harding, I apologise for my eagerness, but what are the diamonds like? How does it feel to control them?”

I snapped out of my awe-inspired trance and replied, “Do you want the honest answer or the one that makes me sound like more of a hero?”

She seemed confused, “The honest answer, I suppose.”

“Bloody terrifying.”

“It’s bloody? In what way?”

I was a bit puzzled for a second, before realising she probably wouldn’t have used the word ‘bloody’ to mean anything other than in reference to blood itself. “Sorry, your Highness. I didn’t mean that. It’s just terrifying.”

She seemed a bit disappointed but asked me what I meant by it. I went on to explain about my visions, dreams, and injuries from the diamonds. She seemed shocked by all of this; she must have only really been told about the pleasant aspects of the diamonds, not to mention how she probably expected someone more heroic to be one of these ‘special’ people.

Eventually, I changed topics and began to ask her about the island and the city we were in.

“As you already know, this is the city of Sarthe,” she began. “Originally founded in 1149 by members of our house, the House of Plantagenet, who supported Henry Plantagenet in his fight for the English throne.”

“Henry Plantagenet,” I interrupted thoughtfully. “As in Henry II?” I vaguely remembered David going on about this war of succession before. I barely listened to him at the time, but clearly something went in.

“What do you mean?”

“Henry II? King of England. If I remember correctly, which I probably don’t, the Plantagenets ruled over England until the 1500s or something.” I thought for a moment as I began to regret blanking out David’s random history facts. “Or maybe it was the 15th century.”

“That can’t be right. My ancestors left England because they knew that he was going to lose.” Mary replied in disbelief.

“I probably am wrong, just ignore me. I don’t know nearly enough to dispute anything you say.”

“Well, either way, the settlers dedicated the island and the city to Henry _Plantagenet_ by naming the island ‘Henersey’ and the city ‘Sarthe’; the city being named after the river that runs through Henry’s birthplace of Le Mans.” I knew the name Sarthe. I’d been to the _Twenty-Four Hours of Le Mans_ the year before with some of my friends and we briefly visited the city of Le Mans where we’d discovered its river’s name. David bored us half to death with random facts about the place during the entire thing, unfortunately. “The city has since grown hugely and smaller farms and villages have cropped up in the surrounding area.”

“You certainly know your history. I’m impressed.”

“History is an important part of our studies here. It is important to know your past. Henry was a great man whose throne was wrongfully taken from him.” I still wasn’t entirely sure about that, but listened obediently nevertheless. “No heir to the throne of Sarthe has ever been named Henry to preserve the name’s eminence. We even have a statue of him in London Square. For that reason, we learn a lot about his struggle and everything around it.”

She continued to tell me about her family’s history. They began as an important branch of the House of Plantagenet who left England’s shores in 1148. The intention was to sail to the Mediterranean and seek refuge somewhere there. Without much of a plan other than escape, they encountered this island, completely uninhabited unlike most of the islands in the area. According to accounts at the time, the sailors encountered an incredible storm but somehow managed to survive it and end up shipwrecked on the island. They created the city of Sarthe over the years and continued to live there. No one had left the island since.

I began to plead with Mary after she had told me this, “Do you have any idea which direction they would have come from?” I leant forward and continued, “Please, Mary. I need to know.” I was trying to find out any way to get off this island possible.

She thought for a moment. “I’m afraid I do not know. You may be able to check our archives at a later date.” I sat back in my chair, disappointed at that answer. She sensed my dissatisfaction and decided to quickly change the topic. “You intrigue me, Harding. You appear to have been here for some time, yet you know very little about where we are. What is your story?”

“I’m not from here at all. I just came from England, actually.”

Mary suddenly spoke up quickly and excitedly, “Really? What is it like now? Is it similar to here still?”

I thought carefully about how to word my answer, before giving up and simply stating, “No. Not in the slightest.” She raised an eyebrow in a mixture of confusion and intrigue. “For starters, we don’t build castles like this one, and the ones that are left are simply there to visit out of interest.”

“Wait for a moment.” She stopped me to think over what I had just said, “How do you show power over the masses if not with a castle? What keeps them in check?”

“Generally, people don’t feel the need to rebel even if things aren’t going their way. There are more peaceful ways of changing things now. Although I really can’t say that it’s a perfect system.”

I continued to tell her a few of the things that had changed, leaving out the really complicated things such as modern transportation or the internet. I tried to keep it relatively simple; although when I had to explain the modern Parliament, which I didn’t completely understand myself, I deeply regretted ever getting into this conversation.

After an exhausting time explaining the intricacies of UK politics, not to mention the fact that the United Kingdom even existed, Mary asked me, “Where does Ms Thompson fit into your life then? Is she your wife?”

I gave Mary a big look of surprise and quickly replied, “No, nothing of the sort. I met her when I arrived on the island.” I went on to explain the whole story of how I got to the island (a version with less immaturity than my drunken blackout at least) and how I met Kate, making sure to explain that it was a purely platonic relationship. “Does it really seem like we’re married?” I asked afterwards, simply intrigued since I didn’t think we gave that particular vibe.

“Not particularly, it is just very rare for a man and a woman to be so close. Although your England seems most strange so anything can happen, I suppose.” She chuckled to herself as if she’d said something completely outlandish.

“Hang on!” I quickly blurted out, completely forgetting about decorum, “Is that why we were given the same bloody bed chamber?”

“I would assume so.”

“Well, that’s just _complete_ bollocks,” I said before I, perhaps foolishly, decided to follow the topic of women in our cultures. “Our societies do seem to have rather different attitudes to women, don’t they?”

“From the way you have been treating Ms Thompson, I would certainly say so.”

“How do you find it here? I know that Kate is hating being here, she’s constantly being sidelined just because she’s a woman.”

This proved to be a hard question for the princess, she sat back and thought for quite a while. “It’s sometimes frustrating, but it’s normal.” She went back into thought, wondering whether she should continue, “Can I tell you something? I don’t think my father particularly wants you to know this right now but I think you will understand.”

“Of course. I’m always up for a bit of gossip,” I grinned but she remained straight-faced, likely not understanding what I had just said at all.

“I am actually the heir to the throne. If my father were to die tomorrow, God forbid, I would become queen. In fact, I would be the youngest ruler in Sarthe’s history at eighteen years old.”

“Wow. That’s really bloody cool.” I leant forward so that she could talk a bit quieter. “Why wouldn’t Harold want me to know that?”

Mary sat forward as well, “No one actually wants me to become queen. Sarthe has never had a female ruler before and they don’t know how it will turn out, especially after Empress Matilda’s attempted reign over England went so poorly.”

“Empress Matilda?” I asked, starting to feel out of my league in this conversation.

“Henry’s mother. She was to succeed her father but was never officially crowned. Many people blame her for the civil war that our ancestors left this island because of. I understand their worries, but I don’t know what to think of it. My father has even told me that he is worried about it.”

“That’s seriously heavy. I’m sure you’d do a great job though, surely you’ve been taught what to do?” I asked, clutching at straws. To my relief, she nodded unassuredly. With some renewed confidence, I continued, “You’re not going to be inherently terrible just because you’re female. That’s ludicrous.” I smiled at her as she smiled back, “And if anyone says otherwise, I’ll mess them up with my weird powers.”

She let out a small, high-pitched laugh and said, “Providing you know what you are doing, of course.”

“Yes, that _may_ be the problem with my plan.” We both let out restrained laughs before I turned back to the topic and asked, “How does your mother deal with these attitudes?”

Her smile disappeared and her face whitened. Her expression turned incredibly serious as she thought deeply about her next few words. “My mother,” she began, giving a long pause before she continued. “She passed three years ago.”

“Oh shit,” I instinctively replied, forgetting myself. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to cause you any grief.” I silently cursed my apparent bad habit of stumbling into extremely sensitive topics.

“No,” She said, wiping a tear from her eye. “It’s not your fault, you had no way of knowing.” She composed herself as I struggled to think of things to say. Before I came up with anything, she carried on. “It was three years ago last February. I do not even know what happened; father refuses to talk about it. You may have noticed the empty seat at the table; he keeps it empty as a way of mourning her.”

I tried to console her as best as I could but couldn’t do much. I was bad enough at consoling people back home, let alone when the language they speak is just different enough for them to barely understand what I mean. When it became clear that I wasn’t helping, she simply changed the topic.

“So, you can control the Diamonds of Perdition. What exactly is your plan for saving this city?”

I hadn’t considered this at this point at all. “I’ve got no idea. I don’t even know what the city needs saving from, to be honest.”

“Knowledge does not seem to be your strong point, does it?” She let out a mischievous smile as if she’d just said the biggest put-down of the century.

I gave her a small laugh, mostly to not make her feel as if she’d stepped over the line. “This conversation has literally been the most information I’ve been given while being here. Can you tell me what’s happening with the city?”

“I am afraid that I cannot. I have not been told enough to pass information on. I would probably get something wrong and I would rather not give you false information.”

“Fair enough. I suppose I’ll be told about it as soon as I’m about to fight the killer death monster of hate and misery.” My sarcasm was met with a small, half-understanding giggle from Mary.

She briefly glanced at the once roaring fire in the fireplace behind her, doing a double take when she realised it was starting to dim. “We appear to have been talking for an awfully long time. It is probably best if you retired to your chamber now. We would not wish for people to talk, would we?”

I didn’t immediately understand what she meant by that, only realising when I got back to my chamber, but stood up regardless. I thanked her for her time and the information and made motions towards the door. She rushed over to the door before just before I got there to say goodbye. She brought me in for a quick hug and said, “It has been wonderful talking to you. We must do it again if you get a chance.”

Trying to sound suave and sophisticated, I said, “I will make the time if I must.” Before copying Mary’s servant’s bow from earlier and opening the door next to me. She quietly giggled, most likely because the suave act didn’t fit me at all, and said goodbye. She instructed one of her guards to escort me to my chamber and the other to get her servant back so that he could stoke the fire.

The guard obliged and silently led me through the hallways to mine and Kate’s chamber. Ordering the two guards outside to unlock the door, he ushered me in and the door was locked behind me as usual. Kate was already in bed, simply staring into space. The fire was going strong in the fireplace and the whole room was brightly lit by candlelight. On my arrival, Kate immediately snapped out of her trance, patted the bed next to her, and excitedly ordered, “Mark! Come here. Tell me all about your ‘meeting’ with the princess!”

I began to do as she asked. While moving over the bed, I said, “Ok, but I can’t promise you’ll find it very interesting.”

She dismissed the comment and, while I was getting ready to get into bed, eagerly began her crass inquisition. “First things first. Did you fuck?”

“A bit forward isn’t it?”

“There’s no point in being coy. Answer the bloody question.”

“No, we most certainly did not.” I realised that some of the princess’ manner of speaking might have rubbed off on me.

“She’s too classy to fuck on the first date, huh?”

I nervously laughed. I genuinely didn’t like the princess in that way and I didn’t think the princess thought about me like that either. I was pretty sure Kate didn’t even think so, she just enjoyed poking fun. “You really want this to be a thing, don’t you?”

“I just think it would be adorable.”

“However adorable it may be, nothing’s happening.” I asserted. 

Kate looked slightly disappointed, “Did you at least find out what the bloody hell is going on with all of this diamond bollocks?”

“Not really, but she did tell me a lot about the island.” I proceeded to tell her everything that the princess had told me about Henersey and Sarthe. Everything that I could remember anyway, I had been told an awful lot of information. When I started talking about how her ancestors had left England in 1148 because Henry Plantagenet’s throne had been ‘wrongfully taken from him’, Kate gave me a look of mild confusion and pity.

“You know that Henry actually became king, right?” She began, clearly trying to draw on old knowledge she had been taught a long time ago. “He was Henry II, I think; the Plantagenets held the throne for ages. You know the Hundred Years War? That was them.”

“I bloody thought so! I didn’t feel right correcting her because I thought that my mind was just playing tricks on me.” I sat back, feeling very smug that I had got something right in history. “So her family is on this godforsaken island for absolutely no reason?”

“Seems like it. Fucked if I’m going to be the one to tell them that though.”

“Yeah, too right.”

We didn’t stay up for much longer past that, we were both exhausted from the long day we had just had. The medieval socialising was probably the most gruelling part for me as trying to act suave and sophisticated with the royalty was not easy. It was incredibly refreshing to speak very frankly to Kate afterwards.

I went to sleep that night feeling significantly calmer than I ever had since arriving on the island. I was still incredibly stressed but could see a light at the end of the tunnel. The only problem was that I had absolutely no idea what was in the tunnel itself.


	10. The Dene

**Sunrise, 1 st June**

Five days had passed and I still hadn’t seen any more of the outside world other than the few glimpses of freedom through the slit windows of the corridors in the maze-like castle. It was starting to get weigh down on me. My days consisted of going to the oppressive maximum-security cell to try and understand how to use my powers – with all of the attempts thus far proving unsuccessful – then going to the guards’ training rooms to do some sword training with Kate. I got occasional breaks for food and rest but past that it was almost solid. We weren’t invited to any more feasts, that seemed to have simply been a special occasion. We tended to eat wherever we were at the time and were then given a larger meal in our chamber in the evening. We were told that we were meant to be focusing on our work, despite the fact that we still had no idea what we were supposed to do once I had ‘mastered’ my powers.

Despite the impersonal nature of King Harold’s hosting, Princess Mary made a lot of time for us. She frequently visited me when I was trying to use the diamonds, though she looked increasingly more disappointed each time nothing happened, and she invited me back to her room a couple more times for a chat. These were not only the few moments I had to almost relax during this whole fiasco, but they also allowed Kate to continue her crude jokes.

I didn’t immediately notice it, but on the second day Kate brought up that I had stopped suddenly waking up in the middle of the night. I thought back and realised that I hadn’t had any nightmares about the diamonds. Indeed, I hadn’t had any dreams at all, and it continued over the subsequent days. I was having the best sleeps I’d had since arriving on the island, probably the best since I’d left for holiday given the hangovers I’d had every morning on the yacht.

Every morning, one of the King’s guards would wake us up at sunrise to a meagre breakfast and take me to the cell I had been trying to train my powers in. I hadn’t seen Harold in the flesh since the feast. This morning, however, once we had been woken up by one of the guards, the King himself came into our room.

“Harding, you have not been progressing quite as expected,” He rather depressively began.

“Good morning to you too,” I sarcastically replied.

“For this reason,” he continued, completely ignoring my comment, “I have decided that it would be best if you practised in a freer environment. We will leave the castle as soon as possible to try and train your powers in The Dene.”

“Do I get a say in this?”

“No. Our window of opportunity is drawing to a close and we must act on it.”

Kate, ever suspicious of the monarch, suddenly chimed in. “What exactly do we have a ‘window of opportunity’ for? We still have no bloody idea what’s going on.”

The King glared at Kate, a common look for him when looking at her by this point, and sternly said, “All in good time,” before beginning to walk out of the room. It felt like his bloody catchphrase at this point. Without looking back, he continued, “Fetch your sword and meet me outside.” He left through the door, shortly followed by his guard who slammed it shut on his way out.

Once we were alone again, I looked over to Kate and asked, “What’s ‘The Dene’?” not fully expecting an answer. She just dismissively shrugged her shoulders and hopped out of bed.

I did the same and we began to get ready. We’d both got our own clothes cleaned and repaired (as best as we could) over the previous few days so we wore those rather than the impractical and confusing clothes they supplied us with. This meant that getting ready was much quicker than previously because we didn’t have to try and work out the puzzles that were the clothes supplied to us.

We exited the room to find two slightly confused looking guards judging our clothes. I had first assumed, rather foolishly, that they simply didn’t like David’s taste in fashion before realising that they’d just never seen modern clothes before. They simply pushed us down the corridor towards the front of the castle. We quickly retrieved my sword and a normal iron one for Kate before making our way to the entrance of the castle.

Every courtier we passed stopped any conversations and simply stared at Kate and me. Their distant gossiping was poorly disguised as we moved further away further away from them. Some were judging my unkempt facial hair which consisted of a pathetically uneven and stubbly beard with an even thinner moustache that didn’t quite link up with the rest; others were discussing the state and style of our clothes, neither of which they had seen before since they had very strict dress codes and always kept them in the best condition possible.

We reached the opened wooden doors of the Great Hall. A brief look inside revealed a large group of servants moving tables and sweeping the floor in preparation for the next feast in the evening. A comforting sight as that indicated that the King wasn’t planning to stay out overnight.

The guards heaved open the opposing big wooden doors, revealing a huge courtyard behind them surrounded by an impressive stone wall, complete with towers at each corner and either side of the main gate at the far end. The ten large but uneven stone steps in front of us led us to the muddied grass of the wide expanse that was littered with people doing a multitude of jobs. On the right-hand side sat the soldiers’ barracks with a group of about twenty infantry wielding wooden swords and circular shields practising their sword fighting technique. They stood in rows of 5, giving a decent gap in-between each other and facing towards the centre of the courtyard all watching a high-ranking instructor in front of them. They attempted to swing their swords at the air in unison under their leader’s instruction but their inability to do so reliably and their mismatch of lighter armours and clothing indicated that, despite being in the King’s army, they weren’t the most professional.

A vague mud track was marked out down the centre of the courtyard, more likely carved from use than intent, on which a small wooden horse-drawn cart was carrying five or six bulky sacks full of a wide variety of items including food, weapons and building supplies. The cart followed the track off to the left and towards the stables and storehouses. Pulling up outside the stone buildings, a couple of stable hands detached the two horses from their cart and led them to the wooden gates of the stables. At the same time, three men came out of a small wooden door next to the stables that led to some sort of rudimentary office for the storehouses. The driver of the cart dismounted, exchanged a few words with them and they all began to move the goods inside.

King Harold was waiting outside for us with two more of his guards, both of which had large leather sacks strapped to their backs. He had donned more practical attire than what we were used to seeing him in. He had covered himself in chainmail and leather armour with a black surcoat and red cloak beneath. Despite the practicality, his outfit was still incredibly ornate. It was covered in intricacies and painstakingly crafted designs, even the chainmail was coloured gold (whether or not it was actually gold was another matter). He was conversing with one of his guards, a guard that I recognised to be present when I was acquiring the sword from the castle’s chamber.

As we stepped closer, we heard the King round off their conversation by saying, “Thank you, my friend,” as he took his key necklace off and handed it to him. The guard gave a small but dignified bow, put the necklace on, and walked off, handing his leather sack to one of our guards and barely glancing at Kate and I as he passed us.

The grey, gloomy clouds in the backdrop of the castle grounds foreshadowed both rain and distinct trouble ahead. The King looked towards us, put his arms behind his back and waited patiently as Kate and I were ushered down the stairs by our entourage of two guards.

“Ideally I’d prefer a sunnier day for leaving the city, but time is of the essence.” He stated on our approach. As soon as I stepped close to him, he turned around and began walking through the road in the centre. Kate followed behind as the three guards formed a triangle around the three of us.

“Leaving the city?” I asked, trying to keep some semblance of composure and valiance but hopeful that for some reason he just meant out of the castle as he had said earlier and not into the terrifying wilderness that had nearly killed me so many times before.

“Yes, Harding. Out and into the Dene.” He glanced over at me as he registered my previous hesitation. His voice was barely audible through the annoying clattering of his chain mail. “It is a forest in a valley not far from here. Its trees have been used for centuries to build Sarthe so it isn’t as large as it once was, but it’s a fair place to get away from the city and practice your talents in peace.”

I thought for a moment, trying to form a counter point without sounding cowardly. As I did so, we walked past the group of soldiers. Harold stopped and watched his men practice until their leader noticed him there. The heavily armoured guard turned around and shouted, “Group! Attention!” as he sheathed his sword, pushed his legs together, kept one hand on his sword’s handle and the other down by his side. His men followed him exactly but were only mostly in unison.

“Excellent show.” Harold began, glancing over the soldiers before resting his gaze on the captain before him. “How goes it?”

“Very good, your highness.” He looked across the rest of us with a look of mild confusion and asked, “My liege, are you going somewhere?”

“I am. I have left my daughter in charge but I should be back by nightfall.” They exchanged stern conversation that I didn’t listen to for a minute or two. I was trying to think of ways to get out of leaving the city, but I was coming up completely blank. They eventually finished their chat with a firm handshake. The soldier went back to his training and the King set himself back on track. I only noticed when Kate walked towards me and nudged me forwards, breaking me out of my deep thought.

I caught up to the King and offered my carefully worded question. “What exactly is the difference between me doing my thing in here and out there?” As I spoke, we passed a group of five spear-armed soldiers marching towards the castle, all of which shouted ‘hail’ as they passed the King. “Isn’t it just risky going out there?”

Harold let out a small condescending chuckle. “Harding. If you are to succeed, you must push yourself. As soon as you are comfortable, you will become complacent and you will fail.”

“I might be more driven if I was told more information than ‘do this thing because there’s danger I promise.’”

The King, struggling to maintain a collected composure for his subjects, sighed and said, “I will tell you everything as soon as we leave the city. We wouldn’t want the people hearing this and panicking, would we?”

“I couldn’t really give a toss, frankly.”

He rolled his eyes as the first of two large portcullises ahead of us were drawn upwards, their ascent accompanied by the loud clanging of chains. They were made of heavy, latticed iron and took the best part of a minute to fully open. The second slowly opened as we walked through the gateway. I looked up and saw the dangerous murder-holes they would use in the event of an attack. Despite being with literally the most important man in this world, I quickened my pace to get out of there as quickly as possible. The gates quickly closed behind us as we stood at the top of the small hill above the city.

The King stood in a powerful stance with his hands on his hips and proudly sighed. “Sarthe. Quite something, isn’t it?”

In all honesty, I was a little disappointed. While it was neither small nor unimpressive, I was expecting something more London-sized. I thought that there would be buildings as far as the eye could see but, as it stood, we could make it to the other end of the city in about twenty minutes of gentle ambling. The fortifications were impressive, however. It was clear that the city had been built in chunks as there were three more walls in total. We could see the entirety of the first before us with its four gatehouses that sat on all four of its rough sides. The second wall surrounded both the first wall and the castle’s hill and so we could only see the gatehouse in-line with us and the two on our left and right sides. The third also encompassed the two inside walls but stopped at the sea to our right, leaving a large open space where the ocean could be accessed. Only two outer gatehouses were visible, one in-line with us that led to a forest – presumably ‘The Dene’ – and one to our left that led to some farmland.

The first and oldest wall was relatively small but was still double the height of any building within it (and most outside it). It was clearly hastily constructed as it only featured one wooden gate per gatehouse and was relatively thin. It also seemed to be ageing and falling into disrepair, especially when compared with the pristine castle wall that we had just passed through. When the city was first built, it seemed as though this wall was built before the castle’s. The ‘motte and bailey’ layout meant that the castle would not have been the main line of defence and so wasn’t the first priority. The second wall seemed to have more thought put into it. A large barbican protected the two gates of each gatehouse with imposing circular towers above them.

The largest wall looked as though it was only a couple of decades old at the most. It was thick and looked extremely expensive to build. Towers ran at regular intervals across it with bigger ones at the huge gatehouses. Two portcullises blocked entry and consisted of the standard iron lattice structure with wooden reinforcement behind each one. The houses in this section were generally larger as well as being sparser with some of them still under construction.

A moderately sized river wound its way under the outer and second walls and through the area between the first and second walls, before passing under the second and into the sea. Its brown waters slightly tainted the blue water of the ocean before dissipating in its expanse. Several bridges of varying sizes and construction spanned the river’s width; the larger and more important bridges in-line with the gatehouses being made out of stone while the smaller footbridges were made out of wood.

Just outside the second wall were a set of small fishing piers that went some way into the calm sea. A few smaller houses were near the piers that looked as though they could house the few people doing the fishing at the time.

A large cathedral stood out among the small buildings. Its huge square spire with points at each corner towered above the second wall that it was inside. The main body of the building ran parallel to the wall and was about the equivalent of about five of the small thatched cottages near it.

I could make out the top of a white stone statue just in front of the second wall, partially obscured by the first. On top of the figure’s slightly large head was a crown very similar to that of Harold’s. The lower half of his body was obscured, but he wore very regal clothes with an imposing but collected stance. I assumed this must have been Henry II.

“Bloody Nora,” Kate said in awe as she moved next to me. “It’s huge!”

I shrugged my shoulders as I made sure that the King was distracted by his own glory and muttered, “I’ve seen bigger.”

Kate jokingly put her arms up defensively, “Alright, London boy. Sorry this is isn’t up to your lofty standards.”

King Harold, visibly annoyed at our presence, moved forward and said, “Let us just get this over with.”

Our group moved down the castle’s hill on the large dirt track before us towards the first wall’s closest gate. At the bottom of the hill, the path split at a makeshift intersection, two paths surrounding the wall while also continuing through the wall’s gate straight ahead. We passed under the aging stone wall and through the wooden gate that was in dire need of replacement. The area inside the wall was only a little bit larger than that of the space inside the castle’s wall. The path led straight ahead and also to the gatehouses to our left and right, but we continued on our journey through the centre. The area was full of thatched cottages of various sizes. They were packed incredibly tightly and the buildings on both sides of the path blocked out a lot of light. We passed a small blacksmith’s shop on our right. The middle-aged man was blackened with soot and was visibly sweating from the heat of his nearby red-hot forge. He was standing behind his small stall that was adorned with various weapons and armours as he was exhaustedly trying to make a sale to three picky individuals. He lifted an iron mace up from the wooden table before him and insisted that one of the younger men of the small group hold it to test how it felt. They remained unimpressed as we walked by and left them to it with only the blacksmith recognising the King’s presence as the others were distracted by their own dissatisfaction. We heard the beginnings of intense haggling as we walked past a small church on our left. It contained a modest spire with a small nave underneath it. It looked like it was still in use but had been somewhat superseded by the larger cathedral.

We passed through the open gate of the first wall that led into the second area of the city. As before, roads weaved through the buildings on our flanks and in front of us. The huge cathedral was visible over the tightly packed buildings and made everything else seem insignificant. The outside was beautifully carved with sculptures and architectural marvels. We were told that it took them over one hundred years to build.

Before that, however, was a large square to the right of the road; London Square. In the centre was the statue of Henry II I had seen earlier. Its lower half was currently covered in scaffolding as it was having some work done to it. Everything else we could see was in pristine condition, they clearly looked after it diligently. The stone-paved square around the statue was spacious and perfectly clean, it was more like a statue to a god than a man who, to their knowledge, was never King. The statue was surrounded on all sides but one by buildings as it backed onto the river that wound its way through this area. The other side of the wide and dirty river was full of buildings packed as tightly as possible.

Before us was one the bigger bridges that spanned the river. Made of cobbled stone, it was covered in mud and manure like the rest of the roads in this area. It clearly saw heavy use and constantly needed to be repaired and reinforced. Looking down the river at the houses on its front, we saw a couple of people throwing buckets of filthy waste water into the already brown river. Immediately after the bridge, we saw a large inn, with a hanging wooden sign over the door that said ‘The Glistering Melon.’ We thought it was a pretty bad name, but the guards spoke highly of it before Harold told them to shut up and do their jobs. The inn sat on the side of the river so that it could have a perfect view of the statue.

The huge cathedral sat up against the second wall with only a small gap in between, a risky move when it first would have been built, but the river on its other side meant that the large amount of space needed for the building, its graveyard, and its grounds wasn’t abundant.

Passing through the large open gates of the second wall revealed the much more spacious third area of the city. With no river to contend with, the multiple paths spreading in several directions could be unhindered. The buildings in this area were generally larger and more expensive. While none of the people we had seen so far were particularly poor, the clientele of this area were certainly wealthier as they were all wearing more expensive clothes and we saw some directing the construction of their new houses to their very specific desires.

The double gate to the outside world was closed but was quickly pulled up by the gatehouse’s chains when the King ordered it open. We stepped out and were immediately greeted by a wide-open grassy expanse with ‘The Dene’ forest before us, flanked on both sides by shallow hills. The mud road quickly faded out as it got further away from the wall, leaving the field seemingly nearly untouched.

We walked away from the final gatehouse and headed for the forest ahead of us. During these few minutes, the King finally spoke up. “This island is in dire need of your help, Harding.”

“Oh, are you finally going to tell me what the fuck is going on?” I quickly replied, reassured that he wasn’t going to have me killed for being rude since he needed me.

“Yes,” He frustratedly answered with a quick glare. “We have informed you of the ‘monsters,’ yes?” I nodded hurriedly in an attempt to get him to hurry up. “And the wielder of the Shield of Control?” I nodded again. He told his guards to move away from us and spread out to keep an eye out for threats, but he just wanted them to not be listening. He told Kate to do the same, but she simply moved back a step from us and kept pace. “The wielder was a member of the royal court. We don’t know who he is, but he has a personal grudge against my family.”

“You have no idea why?” I asked suspiciously.

He hesitated before replying, “None at all. In any case, he is extremely dangerous and must be dealt with. He has the power to control the minds of men and monsters alike.”

“How long has this guy had the shield for?”

“It was stolen roughly three years ago.”

“Three years?!” I exclaimed. “How can I possibly compete with three years of practice?”

“He was never meant to wield the shield, Harding. He had to train himself. You are naturally gifted. With a little practice, you can beat him.”

“How do you know he was never meant to wield it?” I quickly asked, hoping to put pressure on the King.

He stuttered and hesitated. “I’m sorry?”

“You don’t know who this bloke is, right?” He tentatively nodded. “How do you know he’s not ‘naturally gifted?’”

He awkwardly coughed and stalled before saying, “Some sightings have shown that he has had trouble with the artefact.” I was about to continue with my questioning before he quickly cut me off. “It matters not. He is dangerous, but you can be more so with training. That is why we are here.” We passed through the trees and entered into The Dene. We were quickly surrounded by large oak trees and the guards moved closer to us. The trees weren’t too densely packed but there were hundreds of them, meaning that we couldn’t see very far forwards at all. Excepting the occasional slight hill and dip, the ground was extremely level and posed little difficulty when traversing.

We walked mostly silently for over three hours through the same scenery before the leading guard put his fist up in the air, indicating for us to stop. He’d spotted a point of interest in a small clearing. The grass and flowers inside had been severely flattened from constant use and a few tracks went in all directions from the clearing. Some of the grass in the centre had been burnt from a log fire but it wasn’t recent. A few twigs and small branches from a nearby tree lay broken and scattered on the ground but little damage had been done other than that.

“Someone, or something, has been here,” the guard gruffly said.

“It’s probably just a bunch of sheep or something,” Kate said before she was immediately shushed by the King and all of his guards.

The lead guard inched forward after silently instructing the rest of us to stay put. He moved towards the tree that had the most damage. It was relatively large and had a thick set of leaves that completely obscured view. The trunk had been heavily worn and most of the tree detritus on the ground seemed to have come from this one. He looked up and gave a brief look of surprise before shouting up, “You! Come down here!”

The person in the tree let out a small yelp of surprise before a familiar but terrified male voice shouted back down. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Come down here!” The guard repeated as he drew his large iron sword.

“Ok, ok!” The person in the tree quickly replied in a panic. The guard stepped back as the person began to move. The tree’s leaves rustled and branches bent as the person’s weight was moved across it and down their clearly predefined route. A shoe appeared out of the leaves. It reached for the remains of the small broken branch on the trunk but missed, the person put too much faith in their ability to accurately step on it and so slipped and began to fall out of the tree. They tried to grab onto another branch but only slowed themselves down as they fell further and swiftly collided with the floor. They remained where they were, slightly obscured in my vision by the guard in front of him, before looking up at the sharp blade pointing at their neck. He panicked and ungracefully shuffled back to the tree where he sat up against it cowering and covering his face with his hands.

I stepped forward, sure that I knew the person, and tried to move so that I could see around the guard in front of me. “David?” I tentatively asked. David hadn’t fared well with survival on the island it seemed. He was covered in small cuts and bruises and generally looked filthy and malnourished. His ‘salmon’ coloured shirt and khaki chinos were ripped and torn in several places; his worst nightmare.

The front guard glanced at me as the others looked at me with uncertainty. The cowering figure slowly lowered his hands from his face and looked over to me. He looked confused for a moment before a look of recognition came over his face.

“Mark! Fucking hell!” He began to excitedly stand up before the guard in front of him threateningly moved closer.

“Stay there,” he said before turning back to me. “You know this person?”

“Yes, he’s my friend. Let him go.” The guard looked at the King for instruction. Harold pondered for a moment as David’s eyes flicked between me, the guard and the King.

Harold stepped forward. “Who are you?”

“D… David Wright,” came the timid reply, David shaking with fear as the guard’s sword pressed lightly against his neck. He glanced over to me. “Mark’s friend.” Eventually, Harold sighed and slowly nodded to the guard, who pulled his sword away from David but kept it at the ready.

David scrabbled to his feet and sprinted over to me, uncharacteristically gave me a huge hug that nearly floored me and exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, Mark. It’s so fucking good to see you.”

“You too, mate,” I warmly replied as I heavily patted his back revelled in finally being with someone I knew.

He pulled away from the hug after an uncomfortable amount of time. “What on Earth is going on with you? Who are all of these people? Why are you wearing my clothes?” He looked over to Kate before lowering his voice and intriguingly asking, “Who’s this?”

“You know that big city just over there?” I pointed in the direction we’d come from. He shook his head and shot me a confused look. “Fuck me, we’ve got a lot to catch you up on.” I turned to the King. “Can we stop here for a bit? We haven’t seen each other since we got to this island.”

“We cannot spare the time, Harding.” He sternly said. “You may talk when we get back. Practice while you have the chance.”

I looked over to Kate in the hopes that she would have some reason to go against him. She just said, “He’s got a point to be fair.”

I sighed. “Ok. We’ll catch up in a bit. Just tag along and I’ll explain everything later.”

“I don’t understand,” David said. “What can you not spare the time for?”

“I’m not even sure I understand what’s going on. Stick with us and don’t worry about anything that happens.”

“Don’t worry? What the fuck is happening, Mark?” He was understandably concerned. I reiterated my point of not questioning anything until we were back before we moved on again. I made sure that David was being kept safe by one of the guards and we continued on our way to the King’s chosen destination in the forest.

After another few minutes of walking, we approached a much larger clearing. Several trees in the area had been chopped down and only their stumps remained. Four of these stumps lay in a straight line and straw-coiled archery targets of various condition had previously been set up on them.

“Some of my men used to practice here when they needed some open-air training away from the city.” Harold began as we entered the clearing. “I felt as though this would be the best place to test out your abilities.” The lead guard moved up to the closest stump, pushed the target off and took a relatively large piece of scrap iron out of his bag to place it on the stump. He then handed a small burlap pouch to the King who, in turn, held it out towards me. “Have a go.”

Confused, I examined the pouch and, upon recognising the shape of the contents within the King’s grasp as the dreaded diamonds, asked, “May I ask why your men don’t practice here anymore?”

“Circumstances have changed.” He pushed the diamond sack into my hand. “Do this, and they may change again.”

I thought about pursuing this further, before realising that he wasn’t going to give me much more information and reluctantly accepting the diamonds. “Might as well, I guess.” I stepped forward as I prepared for the disappointment and embarrassment of failing to activate the sword again in front of my peers. I held the pouch to my side and untied its fiddly drawstring without looking inside. Once it was loose, I drew my sword and focused in on the iron a few feet in front of me. I took in a deep breath, pointed the sword at the iron and lifted the pouch’s opening into my visual range. My eyes shone the same deep blue but nothing happened again. I could feel the frustration building in me. Despite the supernatural eye colour change, nothing ever happened. I was beginning to think that the King was completely wrong about me.

An exasperated sigh came from Harold behind me as he started muttering to one of his guards. As the muttering became louder and the frustration in me grew, I tightened my grip and focused harder on the scrap. Eventually, I was infuriated and shouted, “For fuck’s sake!” at the top of my voice. I suddenly heard a distant thunderclap as electricity ran from the now-glowing pommel of the blade and through the handle before quickly flowing down and building at the tip. The point started to glow brighter and brighter as I began to have a hard time keeping the sword from shaking uncontrollably in my grip. It grew for a few seconds before I was deafened by a crash of thunder in my ears as the lightning shot out of the blade and struck the scrap iron. The iron disintegrated immediately, leaving only a small pile of black ash where it once stood. The blue in my vision quickly faded as I felt the energy drain from my body. My legs could support me no longer and my grip on the sword failed. I couldn’t support my eyelids any longer as my vision darkened and I found myself on the floor. The diamond pouch was removed from my person as I tried to catch my breath while I laid still on the ground.

“What the fuck just happened?!” David shouted. “What the fuck is going on?! Mark! Are you ok?!” I heard him begin to rush over to me but he was quickly stopped by one of the guards.

Kate ran up to me, apparently managing to evade the guards, and rolled me over so that I was on my back and facing the sky. She put her ear to my chest and her hand on my wrist to check my heartbeat and pulse. When she was satisfied, she moved her head up to mine, wide eyed and frantic, and asked, “Are you alright?”

I gently nodded. Still out of breath, I replied, “I think so.” I showed a small grin and said, “I guess I didn’t die?”

She laughed in relief. “I don’t think so. More surprisingly, you didn’t kill any of us.”

David eventually managed to get over to me. His head entered my vision as he moved Kate slightly out of the way. “Mark! What? How? Why? I just don’t-”

“David, was it?” Kate interrupted. He stopped his questioning and nodded at her. “Let’s give him some space. He needs to rest.” He looked between Kate and I a few times before sighing and agreeing. Both of them moved away as the King moved up to me. He stood above me and looked down.

“Well done, Harding. Whatever it was that you did clearly worked. I think we can take your break for now.”

I eventually managed to sit up and all of us moved to sit in a loose circle. Kate, David and I sat closer together whereas the King and his guards sat just far away enough from us to have their own conversation. The King himself sat on one of the stumps with a rug placed over it. The King’s guards had packed a small amount of food for us and, fortunately, they let the starving David eat some of it as well as us.

“Can you _please_ tell me what’s going on now?” David begged.

“I can certainly try,” I replied before thinking about where to begin with my story. “First things first, this is Kate.” I indicated towards her sitting to the right of David and me. They awkwardly shook hands before he turned back to me. “She’s saved my life more times than I can count. It’s ridiculous.” I went on to explain everything that had happened to Kate and I. Explaining the diamonds and everything that surrounded them took a long time and I had to be careful with my words when explaining the kingdom since the King and his entourage was within earshot. The King did object slightly to me telling him about the person I would be fighting, but I ignored him and told David anyway.

“I still don’t understand,” David said as he polished off his food towards the end of the story. “How come you can do all of this stuff with that sword?”

“I’ve no bloody idea.” I flatly stated. “No one seems to know. Some genetic thing maybe?”

David processed everything for a moment. “Fucking hell, man. This is crazy. I feel like this can’t be real; like I’m just going to wake up on the yacht with a ridiculous hangover and Tom throwing seawater over my face or something.”

“I know what you mean. I don’t suppose you’ve seen Tom or Sam, have you?”

He shook his head. “The last thing I remember before waking up in this place is vowing that we wouldn’t be twats.”

I let out a small laugh. “I thought as much.” Somewhat knowing how the answer would go, I asked, “How have you been faring so far?”

His voice turned sullen and dejected. It was a strange sight; he was normally very animated and relatively joyous when he spoke, but it seemed as though any positive emotion had been sapped away from him. “It’s been horrible. I’ve been living out of that tree and scavenging whatever I could find to eat. When I got here, I tried to just sleep on the ground in that clearing. I had no idea that those…” He paused as he tried to think of a name for the creatures he’d seen. “Those monstrosities would come out. Thank Christ I saw one of those green fuckers coming, I had just enough time to climb into the tree and stay out of their way. What the hell even are those?”

The King, apparently listening into our conversation, chimed in. “The townsfolk have taken to calling them ‘Creepers’ for whatever reason.”

“Call them whatever you want, mate. They’re terrifying.” David replied. Everyone sat in thought for a moment before David remembered my mention of the King’s family and spoke to Harold. “So your family’s from England originally? What family is it?” I could see that his historical interest had been piqued.

“House Plantagenet,” He proudly answered.

“As in, _the_ House Plantagenet?” He excitedly asked. His eyes widened and he leant in as he spoke.

The King gave a look of mild confusion. “Yes. I wasn’t aware that many people would be familiar with our house since our throne was robbed from us.”

“What throne was that?” David asked, slightly confused since he was fully aware that Henry II had actually taken the English throne.

I nudged David in an attempt to subtly tell him to not pursue this line of questioning as Harold responded, “The English throne. Do you not know your history, young man?”

“I must have misremembered,” David said, thankfully picking up on my signal. David skirted around that point but asked as many questions as he could about the family’s history and what medieval life was like. He was like a school boy again; it put a smile on my face to see someone vaguely happy during this difficult time. The King was more than happy to field the questions; he slowly became more and more self-absorbed as he regaled tales of himself and his ancestors.

A vibrant orange shone through the clouds in the sky. We realised that we had stayed in this clearing for far too long, we now had no chance of getting back before the sun completely set. We started to discuss plans for where we should stay for the night.

“The tree’s pretty big,” David said half-heartedly.

Harold shot him a look of disapproval. “We are not sleeping in a tree.”

Kate looked around exaggeratedly. “I’m not sure we have much of a choice.”

“We will find somewhere else.”

A short while later, the three guards were clumsily helping the King clamber up the tree that David had made his home. One had already climbed up with surprising agility in his armour and was trying to pull the King up while the other two were giving him a lift up from the bottom. Using the broken branches and notches on the tree, he eventually managed to get secured on the large branch that David had once spent his nights. The rest of us made our way up, all sitting on separate branches. The branches were large enough for us to all stay stable without too much issue. The guards took branches around the King’s and they were to take turns staying up and watching for any trouble. Kate decided to light torches around the area to ward off monsters as David and I settled into branches near to each other’s.

“What’s the deal with Kate, then?” David quietly asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“Like… What’s her _deal_?” He made suggestive looks at me as he emphasised the word ‘deal.’

“Dude,” I began condescendingly. “She’s, like, twenty-nine and essentially a widow. I wouldn’t go there.”

“You mean you haven’t? I assumed you’d already ‘been there.’”

“I’ve had a few other things on my mind, I’m afraid.”

“Well, she’s in serious danger of me turning on my charm.”

I let out a small and quiet laugh. “Man. I’ve missed you.”

“You too, mate.”

Kate, having finished her task, clambered up the tree and asked, “What’re you guys talking about?”

Since she wasn’t looking at us as she quite adeptly moved onto an adjacent branch, David subtly winked at me and said, “Just some of the shit I did while I was by myself.” It seemed as though having a proper meal for once had brought the real David back a little.

I got comfortable to watch the incoming train wreck as Kate settled into position on her branch and asked, “Oh yeah? Like what?”

“There was this one time; I was totally surrounded by those skeleton fuckers. I kicked one of their legs in, ripped its head off and threw it at another. One of them launched an arrow at me which I caught and stabbed a zombie with it that had just appeared out of nowhere.” He went on like this for a couple of minutes. Kate was admirably feigning interest as his story got more and more ridiculous. It was painfully obvious that he was making it up on the spot, his pauses to ‘remember’ exactly how it happened and his multiple amendments to what he’d previously said made sure that it was clear bullshit. His final mistake was bringing the ‘creepers’ into it since he’d only recently talked about how terrifying they were to him. He also had clearly no idea what they actually did. “One of those creepers was trying to bite me, so I finished them off by jamming one of the spider’s legs into the its mouth and kicking it into the river,” he concluded before glancing around at the both of us for confirmation that his story was as incredible as he thought it was.

“Very good,” Kate said after a short time of thinking. David nodded proudly before she continued. “There’s just one problem with your story.”

“Oh?”

“It’s complete bollocks.”

I inadvertently let out a quick snort of a laugh as David shuffled uncomfortably. “Well…” He said, thinking for a moment. “I might not have drop kicked _quite_ so many zombies.”

“Listen,” Kate said seriously. “Drop the act. It doesn’t suit you or this situation. Play to your strengths.” She waited for a moment to see how he reacted. When he only averted her gaze and retracted slightly, she continued. “Mark tells me you’re crazy good at history. Why don’t you show that off instead?”

“No one finds history interesting enough to talk about.”

“That’s ridiculous. History’s great,” she said excitedly, making David perk up slightly.

“Oh God, there’s two of them!” I half-sarcastically interjected.

“You know you’re wishing you could have known a little more about history,” Kate countered.

David lowered his tone so that the King and his guards couldn’t hear. “Speaking of, I think I’ve actually heard about these guys.” Kate raised an eyebrow and listened intently. “I remember reading something about a small group within the Plantagenets that left England during ‘The Anarchy.’”

“The Anarchy?” I asked, resulting in a condescending look from both Kate and David. I put my hands up defensively. “Sorry! I’ve been scraping through a Maths degree, not acing a history one.”

“Basically,” David began. “Henry I’s only male heir died in 1120. He gunned for his daughter Matilda to take over but, when he himself died in 1135, his nephew, Stephen of Blois, took the throne. Stephen had a load of trouble though; Matilda invaded from Normandy and they ended up fighting it out until 1148 when she got her son, our Henry Plantagenet, to take over for her. He re-invaded in 1153 and eventually managed to piss Stephen off enough that they signed a treaty in 1154 to make Henry the rightful heir to the throne.” I nodded along and desperately tried not to lose interest as this was important. “I’ve heard about a small group of lesser-known nobles loyal to Matilda. After she returned to Normandy in 1148, seemingly defeated, they saw fit to leave England. The house later declared them traitors and attempted to have any knowledge of their existence wiped from the records. Accounts still exist though and I tried to study them as part of one of my uni projects. No one actually knows what happened to them, but I reckon it’s these guys.”

“See, David?” Kate said, sparking a look of confusion from him. “That’s sexier than your bullshit.”

Ignoring the comment, I continued to tap David’s knowledge. “So these family members just fucked off when things got tough?”

Still slightly taken aback by Kate, he took a moment to respond. “I don’t think that they were family members, not close ones at least. But essentially, yes. It’s kind of weird that they’re so fond of Henry rather than Matilda though. Henry had barely done anything by the time they left.”

“Guess they’re really not fans of female rulers.”

The night was a cold one. As the sun finally set, we all settled into position under the orange glow of the torchlight and stayed silent as we tried to ignore the roaming monsters as best we could. It wasn’t easy but they tended to stay away from the torches so nothing ever found out where we were. Kate and I kept our swords handy though. We agreed that we would stay up for half of the night each to keep watch as we didn’t entirely trust the King’s guards. I took the first watch which went by without a hitch. When Kate figured that it was roughly 2 o’clock, she I and swapped over.


	11. Control

**Sunrise, 2 nd July**

Kate woke me up as the sun rose and the Kings’ guards did the same for each other. We clambered down the three, gathered our belongings, and prepared to head back to the city. Oddly, all of the monsters from the night had completely disappeared; none were hiding in shadows and even those that could survive the sunlight were nowhere to be found. We weren’t sure why this had happened, but we weren’t about to complain.

Not exactly knowing where we were going, I opted to follow the King’s men when they set off rather than leading the way. It only dawned on me that we weren’t heading the way we had come a couple of minutes later. I moved over to the King and questioned, “Wasn’t Sarthe back that way?” Indicating in a vague direction opposite to the way we were travelling. I had no idea if I was pointing in the correct direction, but I felt like it added to my point.

“We are not going back immediately,” Harold replied. “I would like you to demonstrate your sword fighting abilities today.”

“I thought that the plan was for you to get back as soon as possible,” I said, knowing that it wouldn’t make a difference but definitely hoping that the monarch would change his mind at the thought of the imminent responsibilities back home.

“We are here and we are safe,” he declared forcefully. “We should train while we can. If you are to use that weapon I would like to know that you can actually wield it.”

We reached the clearing that we had been in the previous day and I reluctantly got into position. The sun was shining through the trees and there was a light breeze that went some way to make the heat more agreeable.

As the King was conferring with his guards to decide who I would be training against, I tried to prepare the stance that Kate had taught me. I held my sword in my right hand and pushed it in front of me as I stood with my legs apart and facing diagonally. I felt confident I’d gotten everything right until I saw Kate frantically waving her left hand at me and putting it behind her back, signalling to me that I should do the same.

I heard some mutterings of the guards saying that none of them wanted to be struck by the Sword of Light, which I thought was fair enough. The King agreed and was about to take one of their swords to give it to me for training purposes.

“ _Harold!”_ A deep, masculine but noticeably upper-class voice shouted angrily through the trees. No one could tell which direction it came from. We panicked and looked around the treeline but saw nothing at all. “I see you have finally decided to face me like the man that you never were.” We heard footsteps as clouds enveloped the sky and blocked out any sunshine. Looking in the footsteps’ direction revealed a familiar looking man. His dark but greying hair ran down to the shoulders of his sun-bleached purple overcoat. The once-white tunic of the middle-aged man looked ragged and filthy. He wielded a large circular shield on one arm and held the handle of a sheathed simple iron sword with the other hand. The engravings on the perfect silvery metal of the shield matched those on my sword and its central boss gently glowed a light blue. I recognised him as the man from my previous vision. Everyone with a sword drew them as Kate and David walked slowly over to me. “This forest is my realm. You know that.”

“Edward,” the King sternly said as he stepped forward with his sword drawn. “We’re not causing you any trouble. Just let us leave.”

“On the contrary, dear father,” he confidently replied.

I turned to Kate and whispered, “Father?”

“What the fuck?” She whispered back.

“You have indeed caused me a lot of trouble,” Edward continued loudly. “You have caused this. All of this.” His tone raised as the blue glow on his shield became slightly brighter. We started to hear many more footsteps but couldn’t see the sources. “You treated me like I was nothing to you. Like I was the scum of the kingdom.”

“I apologise for however I may have mistreated you,” Harold replied diplomatically before being quickly cut off.

“You _apologise?_ ” Edward scoffed. “You and your people shunned me and treated me terribly simply because you couldn’t keep your codpiece on. I was laughed at, called names, and even beaten by your ‘subjects’!” His voice started to raise in pitch and volume as his rage built. “I don’t care about not being the heir, let Mary have that job, I just wanted to live my life peacefully! I can not believe how callously you would treat one of your own blood! Especially when I am entirely _your_ fault! Does Mary even know that I exist?” The King shook his head, shame taking over. “No, of course she doesn’t! How dare you hide your mistakes from your own family?!” As he rounded off his sentence, fifteen to twenty skeletons and zombies appeared in the treeline around us but stopped, holding off on their attack in an unnerving show of restraint. The guards formed a circle to face all of the monsters. I suddenly recognised this area. This was the area that I had seen in the vision the sword had given me when I first picked it up.

“Oh shit,” I muttered as my realisation of the future hit me.

Edward looked over to me and deathly stared for a moment. “Ah. It’s you,” he began confusingly. “I know _all_ about you. I don’t suppose he has told you about me though, has he?” I shuffled nervously and shook my head. “No. Of course he hasn’t. Why don’t I inform you? I’m the bastard son of your ‘wonderful’ king. I’m the one he has sent you after.” He dropped his tone and smiled. “I’m the reason that you are here at all.”

“You what?” I said in disbelief, anger building inside me.

“Without my intervention, you might still have been happily living your life away from here.” He paused for a moment, presumably for effect. I tightened my grip on my sword as I felt Kate hand me the pouch of diamonds from behind me that she’d apparently swiped earlier. I tried to stealthily untie the drawstring with my other hand and hold them at the ready. He didn’t seem to notice because he was absorbed in his own monologue. “You were meant to die, but I will offer you a way out. There’s no point in fighting me. You can’t win. And, if you continue, I will be forced to finally kill you and destroy the city of Sarthe in its entirety.” He turned his attention back to Harold. “For now, however, you’ll do.”

“ _You’re_ the reason I’m on this shithole of an island?” I questioned furiously. He idly turned back to me before I shouted, “You motherfucker!” as loud as I could, glanced at the diamonds in my hand, and concentrated as hard as I could on firing a bolt of lightning at him. The electricity quickly flowed from the pommel, accompanied by the distant thunderclap, and down to the tip of the sword. The sword shook in place and I screamed as loud as possible as the lightning shot out towards the surprised Edward. Instinctively, he raised his shield which blocked the attack, causing the lightning to bounce off and strike a zombie in the treeline. The bolt jumped across five of the monsters nearby, instantly electrocuting and turning them into a black ash that was blown away by the light breeze. My blue vision faded as Edward lowered his shield and jumped back while drawing his own aging sword.

I felt myself lose my balance and energy before I saw the lack of any effect on my target. I mustered my reserves of energy, shoved the diamond pouch into my pocket, and charged forward in anger with my sword raised. A couple of arrows flew by me as the monsters started to attack and everybody began to defend themselves. I got within a few feet of Edward before he raised his shield again. Its blue centre glowed even brighter and flashed, blinding and deafening me completely for a few seconds. I stopped completely and tried to regain my vision.

When I did, there was no one around me. I was by myself in the forest’s clearing. The cloudy sky had been replaced by brilliant sunshine overhead and the forest was completely still. I frantically looked around but there was no evidence of any life whatsoever. That was until a figure stepped out from behind one of the larger trees.

I stared at her in disbelief. It was Lucy. She was as beautiful as ever and the sunlight fell on her perfectly. Her long blonde hair somehow blowing gracefully in a breeze that didn’t exist and her face and body as perfect as they ever were. Her white shirt and fitted blue jeans were in pristine condition, completely unaffected by the island’s horrors. I didn’t understand how she was there, let alone how she remained so perfect when I looked like shit. I didn’t care though; I sheathed my sword and sprinted up to her, my eyes tearing up as I went. “Lucy!” I shouted as I kissed her and gave her the biggest hug I’d ever given. “What are you doing here?”

She held me tight and spoke softly. “Mark! I’ve missed you so much. I’m so happy you’re still alive.”

“I can’t believe you’re here. I was sure I’d never see you again.” Joyful tears started to run down both of our faces as we remained in each other’s embrace. “I love you so much. I’m never going to let you go again.”

“I love you too. Please don’t go through with what the King wants. I can’t lose you.”

“I won’t, I promise. I’ll put my weapons down and we can live together. We don’t need anyone else.”

“Just do what Edward wants. He knows what’s going on.”

I pulled back slightly and looked into her eyes. “Why don’t we just fuck the lot of them and run off by ourselves?”

“No.” She took a stern tone with me. “I need you to follow him.”

I stuttered. She was confusing me. “What? Why?”

She seemed to become angry. “Do you trust me, Mark?”

“Of course I do, but-”

“Then do as I say and submit to me.” Her voice deepened as Edward’s voice seemed to come through slightly. I pulled away from the hug and looked intently at her. She glared at me in anger and awaited a response.

“I don’t understand. What’s happening, Lucy?”

“I don’t have time for this!” She shouted with her mixed voice.

My vision was suddenly covered in another bright flash. As my sight returned to me, I saw the King collapse next to me holding his eye with the shaft of an arrow making its way through his fingers. The scene was exactly as I had seen previously. David was cowering behind Kate as her and the King’s guards were fighting off monsters. Edward charged up to me at full speed with his sword and shield raised. My sword was somehow back in its sheathe. I reached for it but, before I had a chance to react, he pulled his shield back and swung it forward, immediately colliding with my face and knocking me unconscious and I was sent straight to the ground.

. . .

I opened my eyes to see a shallow-arched wooden ceiling a few feet above me. The uncomfortable bed dug into my back but I didn’t feel like I had the energy to move a muscle. My head throbbed with pain as someone attempted to gently wash my bruised and bloody face with a wet piece of cloth. I muttered Lucy’s name repeatedly, hoping that she was nearby and I could get her attention, as I slowly came to my senses.

“Thank Christ you’re awake,” Kate said as she pulled the cloth back.

“Where’s Lucy?” I asked weakly as I turned to look at her. Sitting in a chair next to the bed I was on, she had a makeshift bandage around her arm and looked incredibly tired. David was stood next to her with a black eye and a cut lip but no major damage.

“Lucy?” David replied to confirm that he had indeed heard the correct name. “Back in England, I imagine.”

“She was here. I saw her.”

“I think you’re imagining things, Mark.”

“She was in the forest!” I yelled as I tried to sit up. Kate put her arms out to stop me just as I discovered an agonising pain coming from my stomach. I stopped in place and endured the pain for a few seconds before looking down. My torn and bloodied shirt had been discarded on the floor to reveal a bloodstained cloth around the entirety of my stomach.

“Lie back down, Mark,” she said. “You really took a beating back there, you need some rest.”

I obliged but continued my angry statements. “I _need_ to find Lucy. She’s in serious danger.”

“What are you talking about?” David asked. “How is she here? What danger?”

“Edward had done something to her. I don’t know.”

“It was probably some trick by him. She can’t be here,” Kate said.

“I touched her. I spoke to her. She was there. I know it.”

Kate and David shared a look of worry before turning back to me. “You clearly need to rest some more,” Kate began. “We’ll leave you in peace for now but we’ll be back later.”

I grabbed Kate’s arm as she began to walk away. “Please keep an eye out for her. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to her.” She solemnly nodded before they both left the bleak room.

I didn’t understand why they were being so difficult. I began to resent them for it. _How did they not see her? Why didn’t they believe me?_ I wanted to get up and search for her, but I was stopped by my excruciating wounds every time I tried to move at all. I dwelled on these thoughts for a while before I realised that I had absolutely no idea where I was.

The small room was relatively featureless. The white-stone walls contained a couple of large vertical wood beams that made up the frame of the building. The wooden floor wasn’t particularly clean and the roof clearly had a leak as there was a damp patch in the far corner. A small lantern sat on a bedside table dimly lit the room and the chair that Kate had been sitting on looked to have been pulled from one of the corners where another chair and a small table lay. I tried to recognise it as an area of the castle, but I came up completely blank and couldn’t work out where I was at all.

Tired of being confused, I simply lay back in my bed. I found that my sheathed sword was still attached to me, the others being understandably scared to touch it. Sick of the thing, I took it off and chucked it across the room, letting it clatter noisily to the ground, before closing my eyes and trying to recount the morning’s events. The diamonds were still sitting uncomfortably in my back pocket, but I didn’t have the energy to take them out.

I woke up and saw Lucy staring down at me with a look of serious concern. When she saw that I was awake, she leant down and gave me an impassioned kiss.

“You’re back,” I said with a smile as she pulled away.

“Don’t believe them,” she replied. “Don’t believe anything they say. They want you to fail.”

“Who? Kate and David?” She nodded quickly. I trusted her, but needed help understanding what they would have against me. “But they’re my friends. Why would either of them do that?”

“They’re jealous of you, Mark. Only I understand what you’re going through.” We heard heavy footsteps rushing towards the door to our room. “Oh no,” she said as she took a step back. “They found me!”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand!” I shouted at her as I tried and failed to sit up.

“Please don’t forget me!” With that, Kate shoulder-barged her way through the door, quickly followed by David, both with swords at the ready.

“There she is!” David shouted as he pointed at Lucy. Kate gave a determined nod and charged at her. I tried to shout at them to stop but they completely ignored me and I couldn’t muster the strength to get up. Kate pushed her left forearm into Lucy’s neck and shoved her against the wall behind. Without a moment’s hesitation, she plunged her sword into Lucy’s stomach. Lucy made little noise, simply pained whimpers, as the sword penetrated deeper into her body, blood slowly absorbing into her clothes. Kate stared straight into her eyes as the life drained from her body. When the sword reached the stone wall behind, Kate pulled it out, sheathed it, and walked off without saying a word. David quickly followed after glancing briefly at me with a flicker of regret. Lucy slid down the wall, leaving a crimson smear as she went. She started to shiver as a small amount of blood trickled out of her mouth and her consciousness slowly left her.

My eyes opened suddenly as I found myself sweating profusely in the bed. Kate and David were standing over me once more. “What did you do?! Get the fuck away from me!” I instantly shouted and meekly flailed my arms in fear.

“What _did_ we do?” David asked.

“You murdered Lucy!”

“What? No we didn’t!”

“Yes you did! She’s right there…” I trailed off as I looked over to where Lucy’s dying body was, but it and the bloodstain had disappeared. “What have you done with her?!”

The pair exchanged a confused look before Kate spoke. “Mark, you were just having a dream. I think you were muttering something about her.”

Maybe she managed to escape. She still had a chance. “Just fuck off!” I continued regardless. “I know what you’re up to. Don’t touch her!”

David stepped past Kate and sat on the chair next to the bed, I recoiled slightly but didn’t have anywhere to go. Calmly, he said, “Mate, I’ve known you for fourteen years and Lucy’s great. What would I have against you two?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. Just don’t come near me! Especially you!” I pointed at Kate and stared her down.

“What did I do?” She asked defensively.

“You fucking know what you did,” I snarled.

She turned to David. “It seems like he’s got a problem with me. I’m not helping matters by being here, can you handle this?”

“I can bloody-well try,” he responded uneasily.

She made motions towards the door before turning back and saying, “Mark, I’ve not done anything to harm you, nor do I intend to. You’re my only friend right now, please don’t start believing that I would ever intentionally hurt you.” I ignored her as she dejectedly walked out of the room and gently closed the door.

“What’s going on, mate?” David asked nicely as soon as the door closed. “Why do you think we want to find and harm Lucy?”

“I saw Kate do it. You were there. How do you not remember?” I pleaded.

“I don’t remember it because it never happened. You were dreaming, Mark. That Edward guy really shat you up.”

“It can’t have been a dream. It was real when she kissed me. I can still see her face as Kate stabbed her.”

He sighed deeply. “Does fourteen years of constant friendship mean nothing to you? Do you not trust me when I say that it never happened?”

I thought about his point for a moment. I had known him for a long time, that did mean something to me. On balance I definitely could have once called him loyal. But, if he was so loyal, why would he lie about Lucy not being there? “I can’t trust you,” I finally decided. “Not when you refuse to accept that she was with us in the forest.”

“How would she even get here?” He stuttered briefly as he struggled to come up with his next sentence. “What kind of crazy coincidence would that be?”

“I don’t know. I never said that I had all of the fucking answers, ok?” I replied, raising my voice. “I know what I saw and what I saw was Lucy. If you can’t accept that then you might as well piss off.”

“Fine!” He shouted as he quickly stood up, knocking the wooden chair over as he did so. “I’ll leave you to your fantasy world where girlfriends appear out of the fucking ether!” He turned around, kicked the chair slightly further away, and stormed out of the room, slamming the door as he left.

I sat by myself in that room for some time. I felt completely alone in the world. My so-called friends had betrayed me and Lucy, the only person that I trusted, was gone.

Days passed. Kate and David tried to talk me out of my anger a few times but I gave no indication of belief in them. I was haunted by the dying face of Lucy in my memories and I couldn’t find a way past it, I was sure that I had little left to live for.

A younger woman brought me food in the mornings and evenings, she didn’t say much but seemed nice; though she was still untrustworthy from her association with David and Kate. She must have been slightly scared of me because she always averted her gaze as she walked in with the trays of simple meals. I didn’t want to eat the meals in case they’d done something to them, but I didn’t have much of a choice in my state.

On the fifth morning, Kate entered my room. As usual, I simply said, “Get out,” as soon as I recognised that it was her, but she pushed through and sat next to me.

“I’ve been trying to think of ways to make you believe us. It’s been difficult, but I think I’ve got it.”

“You can try your fucking best, murderer.”

She ignored my comment and reached into one of her pockets. After a small amount of rummaging, she pulled out a small rectangular piece of paper. It was severely crumpled, visibly water stained, sun bleached, and slightly torn in some places, but it clearly held a special meaning for Kate. She stared down at it for a few seconds before slowly turning it around. It was a fading picture that depicted her a few years younger and a similarly aged man. Few details could be made out but they had their arms around each other and had big smiles across their faces. Words struggled to exit her mouth, but eventually she managed to say, “This is my husband. Stuart.”

I could see she was having a hard time, but I didn’t care much. “Ok. So?” I responded.

“I lost him when I was shipwrecked on this island. Our small boat was completely destroyed in the storm but only I ended up here.” She looked me deeply in the eyes as her own started to redden. “He died right in front of me. I watched him get impaled by pieces of the crumpling boat, I watched him die as the storm wrenched him away from me.” A single tear ran down her cheek.

“And why are you telling me this?” I asked, refusing to see her in any kind of human light.

“I know what it’s like to see your other half die. It’s horrible. I barely made it through my time on this island because I was an absolute wreck. I loved him so much and I couldn’t bear to face the truth that he was gone forever. I could never do that to someone else, even if I had reason to. I wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy. And if I did see Lucy, I would stop at nothing to reunite you with her. It may be too late for me, but I would love to see you as happy as I imagine you would be if you actually saw her again.”

It was like she’d flicked a switch inside of me. What she said made perfect sense, she’d never shown any ill feelings towards me nor the idea of Lucy, it didn’t make sense for her to suddenly be against us. I remembered the odd circumstances that surrounded my first sighting of Lucy; the absolute chaos of the beginning of the fight, then only me and her in a perfectly still forest that felt entirely different yet exactly the same as the one we were fighting in. I suddenly couldn’t work out why I’d been so stupid as to believe that Lucy was on the island and that Kate and David wanted to harm her in any way.

Kate averted her gaze from me and stared at her picture again as I was lost in my thoughts. “I’m such a twat,” I said after a minute of silence. She looked up at me in confusion. “I’m so sorry,” I continued, “I don’t know what came over me, how could I believe that she was actually here?”

“Thank fucking Christ,” she replied with relief as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “You’re back! It’s not your fault, that arsehole did something to you. Using your loved ones against you? That’s absolutely disgusting and evil of him.” She stood up, put her picture away, and leant over to give me a big hug, accidentally briefly putting her hand on my stomach wound as she did. I winced but said nothing as she tightly squeezed me before pulling back slightly and looking into my eyes. “I was so scared that you were going to be like that forever.”

“I don’t understand. What even happened to me? I could have sworn Lucy was there.”

She sat back down on her chair next to the bed and entered into her side of the story.

As soon as my lightning failed to effect Edward, the monsters began to attack. The guards formed a circle around the King and defended him with their lives. The weaponless David stayed behind Kate as she readied herself for a fight. She shouted at me to hold back as I charged forward but I didn’t notice, my anger clearly getting the better of me. As everyone but David fought off the various attacking monsters, Kate saw the effects that the shield had on me from the outside. I sprinted for Edward but stopped and sheathed my sword as he raised his shield when I was a few feet away from him. Kate tried to make it over to me, but the onslaught of attackers was too much for her and she couldn’t manage it. David’s wounds were caused by her frantically turning to face attackers and his face getting in the way of her elbow.

All she could do was catch glimpses of my blank faced expression as I sheathed my sword and stood in the middle of the chaos, simply staring at Edward. He looked relaxed as he stared down the struggling King with a menacing smile. One of the guards took an expertly placed arrow in the neck and died almost instantly, making the remaining two fight even harder as they’d clearly just lost a dear friend.

Edward kept glancing over to me and seemed to get more frustrated with every glance, up until he shouted, “I don’t have time for this!” and started to move towards me. I shook out of my trance and blearily looked at the chaos in the same instant that an arrow flew past Kate and struck the King in the eye. He collapsed as I noticed Edward charging towards me. Another arrow struck Kate in her arm, fortunately most of the impact being stopped by her leather, as a zombie approached her. She cut it down while Edward bashed me with the shield and another zombie took down a second guard and gruesomely robbed him of his life.

Edward shouted, “Stop!” just as a skeleton lined up an almost unavoidable shot on Kate. She and the single remaining guard stopped in place and nervously held their weapons ready as David slowly stood up behind Kate. “I am happy to let you go. I have no quarrel with you three, whoever you are.” He stared down at my unconscious body. “I did warn him.” He aimed his sword at my stomach and prepared to push it in.

“Don’t you fucking touch him,” Kate threatened.

He looked her in the eyes. “I’m sorry. Did you want to die as well?” Still looking at Kate, he slowly plunged the sword into my stomach.

“Oh god. Mark!” David said in terror.

I remained unmoving as Edward removed the sword and wiped the blood off on my shirt. “Don’t. Move,” he ordered as he strolled over the King, pushing the shaking guard out of the way as he did. He started to almost growl and seethe as he stared at the King’s body. He knelt down, yanked the arrow out of the King’s eye and stood back up as he discarded it. “This is for everything,” he said as he brought his foot above the face of the corpse. With enough force to break the King’s nose, he stomped down, creating a disgusting cracking sound as the cartilage was forced into his skull. Again and again, he stamped down on his face and began to shout louder with every attack. Blood erupted and covered his boot and the grass around it as the relentless assault continued.

All Kate and David could do was watch in horror as the King’s face became more and more unrecognisable and blood started to seep out of my fresh wound. After just under a minute of this, he finally stopped and regained his composure. He stared at the three left standing and said, “You may live. But know this. If you cross me again, all of the people’s lives on this island are forfeit.” He waited for a moment. “Understand?” All three quickly and frantically nodded in unison. “Good.” He spat on the King’s lifeless body before saying, “I hope I never have to see you three again.”

“I honestly have no idea how you’re still alive,” Kate said, wrapping up her story.

Pondering this myself for a moment, I eventually just said. “It’s probably something to do with the diamonds. It’s always something to do with the diamonds.” She lightly grinned at me as memories of the event started to flood back to me. “So, the King. He’s dead?”

She slowly nodded. “He didn’t make it. Only us three and one of the guards got out alive.”

“Shit. This is so fucked.” Mulling over the news of the King’s death for a moment, I continued my questioning. “Edward doesn’t know that I’m alive, then? And he’s not going to attack us for any reason as long as he believes that?”

Kate nodded. “I don’t know about you, but I’m more than willing to leave him be.”

“Couldn’t agree with you more.” I indicated to the sword that I’d discarded onto the room’s floor to confirm my sentiment. “We should just work on finding a way off this shithole. Seems like that guy has had it hard enough as it is without us trying to ruin his life further.” She agreed and we sat in silence for a moment as I thought about the sight of the chaos in the forest. “Kate, do you reckon you could be a sounding board for something that could be a bit of a crazy ramble?” She raised an eyebrow but nodded at me. “I didn’t immediately realise it, but I’d seen that forest clearing before. I saw it when I first touched the sword, it was exactly as it happened. The King with an arrow in his eye and Edward being there as well as David and the shit-tonne of monsters.”

“Why didn’t you bring it up earlier?”

“I’ve had so many visions and dreams that haven’t come true. I just didn’t believe it to be honest.”

“Maybe we should start listening to them. What were the others?”

“The first one was in that lava and flesh-covered landscape with…” I paused as I had a realisation. “With Edward’s shield! I can only assume that it was the ‘Nether’ that Harold was on about. The second one was of this city being destroyed. There was a dead guy on the floor. I guess it could have been Edward but I’m really not sure.”

“He said that he wouldn’t bother attacking if we did nothing.”

I thought about Kate’s story for a moment to think about our next movements. “Maybe, if we do nothing, things will change and it won’t come true. I really don’t want to face him again.”

“Yeah. Let’s just work on fucking off out of here.”

“Agreed.” I suddenly realised that I had no idea where ‘here’ was in the short term. “Where exactly are we?” I asked as I scanned the dull surroundings once more.

“We couldn’t go far once we got inside the city, so we managed to wrangle a room in that inn on the riverside. ‘The Glistering Melon’ or something stupid like that.”

“How are you paying for it?”

“Oh, we’re not. The woman on the bar let us in for free at first because you were so fucked up and then we sent for the soon-to-be Queen who is putting you up for now.”

“Remind me to thank her. Is she not Queen already?”

“Her coronation’s in a couple of days I think. She’s requested your presence, but we can still pretend that you’re batshit crazy if you’d rather not.” She smirked. “Y’know, put your pants on your head and stick a couple of pencils up your nose.”

I felt my stomach wound to check how painful it still was. When mildly touching it with one light finger sent a surge of pain through my body, I looked at Kate and said, “That would be good.”

“It’s probably for the best.” She thought for a moment before saying “Tell you what, though; the way they treat me around the castle has really improved now that they have a female monarch.”

“They’re that fickle up there?”

“It’s not perfect; I almost decked someone that dismissively called me ‘love’ the other day, but it’s better.”

Over the next half hour, Kate caught me up on the situation in court. There was an air of tension throughout the King’s trusted men. It was clear to Kate that this would be a time of severe unrest but at least the people in power seemed to recognise that they needed to deal with the immediate threat first.

We chatted for a short while longer about this before she said, “I’ll fetch David. I know he’s been pretty down about this all.” She stood up and began to leave the room.

Before she could leave, I called out to her and said, “Thank you so much, Kate. I’m sorry you had to do what you did for me.”

She smiled and said, “It’s ok. It was actually good to get it all out,” before she left the room.

After a few minutes, the door inched open and David tentatively poked his head through it. He still looked tired, clearly having not gotten much sleep over the past few days. He looked nervous as well, unsure about whether I was still angry or not. “You’re fine, David,” I said to reassure him. “I’m good now.”

“Jesus, man.” David said with a large exhale while confidently swinging the door open. “What the fuck happened to you?” He rushed over and sat by me on the chair next to the bed.

“I don’t bloody know. Some magical bollocks. I’m so sorry for everything, I hope you know I didn’t mean any of it.”

“Don’t worry about it. I might have flown off the handle slightly, but I know it wasn’t you.” He drifted into thought for a moment before looking back at me. “A few days ago, I was starving in a tree and blissfully ignorant to all of this. In less than a week, I’ve seen a sword shoot lightning, a King get shot by a reanimated skeleton, and a shield that turned my friend into an absolute spack. What on Earth have you gotten yourself into?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you, but I’m washing my hands of it. Fuck the diamonds, fuck the sword, and fuck Sarthe. If this ‘Edward’ guy wants me out of the picture, I’m fucking out.”

“What made you want to help out anyway?”

“The King promised to help us find a way off the island. Doubt that’s happening now though.”

David nodded thoughtfully as he considered the situation further. “Maybe the new Queen will do something?”

“I can’t imagine she’s best pleased about her father dying in our company.”

“I’m sure that you of all people can sweet talk her.” Kate’s voice coming from the doorway surprised us as she strolled in. David looked at her inquisitively before she explained. “The princess has a bit of a thing for Mark.”

“Oh really?” David turned back to me and grinned. “Get in there, mate.”

“Thanks, Kate,” I said sarcastically. “She’s exaggerating.”

“Like Hell I am,” she immediately replied, seemingly anticipating my response. “She’s all over you and takes every chance she can to be around you. Since you’ve been in this inn, she’s been constantly asking after you and wondering how you’re doing.”

“It’s probably because she expects me to ‘save the world’ or whatever.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

“Guys, wait.” David held up his hands for attention as he interrupted us. “I have a very important question to ask.” He leant in and looked deep into my eyes with a look of complete seriousness. Kate inched closer and we both listened intently. “Is she fit?”

Kate and I both laughed out loud as David politely chuckled along but still expected an answer. I regained my composure and said, “I guess so. I haven’t thought about it.”

“Bollocks you haven’t,” he quickly replied before turning to Kate. “Is she?”

“Oh yeah,” she flatly stated before turning back to me. “Speaking of Mary, we should probably let her know that you’re fine. She’ll want to know, I’m sure.”

“I thought that we were sticking with the ‘batshit crazy’ excuse to get me out of the coronation?”

“I thought about that, but I feel like growing a new hole in your stomach is reason enough.”

I was eventually left to recover by myself. Mary was informed of my well-being but didn’t visit, apparently being busy with a combination funeral and coronation as well as all of the responsibilities that came with inheriting a kingdom. Despite my wounds healing abnormally fast, as usual, I was still unable to attend the coronation a couple of days later, but I had it on good authority from Kate and David that it was one of the weirdest things they’d ever seen in their lives simply because it was exactly how they imagined a medieval coronation. The attendees, various nobles and wealthy citizens from the area, seemed outwardly happy at the occasion but it was clear to David and Kate that there was a thinly veiled resentment among them towards Mary.

It didn’t take long for the city to return to normal; the bunting in the streets was quickly taken down and most people basically forgot that anything had happened. The average person’s life hadn’t changed much anyway; the biggest difference was reluctantly saying ‘God save the Queen’ rather than enthusiastically chanting ‘God save the King’.


	12. Back Peddling

**Midday, 14 th July**

I sat on the bed and carefully pulled my shirt over my body as David and Kate stood either side of me. Once I was done, they wrapped their arms under mine and prepared to haul me up. My wounds had healed to a point where I felt that I could just about walk back to the castle, I definitely needed my friends to help me with the initial problem of standing up though. Together, they lifted me off the bed I was sat on. My stomach strained and sent waves of pain through my body, but I ignored it as best as I could and let them pull me up.

Once I was finally upright, Kate asked, “Reckon you can stand by yourself now?”

“I can have a go, I guess,” I replied, uncertain. Tentatively, they left my side but remained close and ready to hold me if I looked like I was about to collapse. I was unsteady for a moment and had to lean my hand on the back of the chair next to the bed, but I managed to compose myself and stand free. My stomach pulsed with a constant mild pain but I was used to it by this point.

“Do you think you can do this?” David asked after waiting to see if I was stable.

I took in some air to numb the pain and nodded to him. Kate made motions to my still discarded sword, saying, “We probably shouldn’t leave this here.”

“Kate, wait!” I called, stopping her in her tracks. “Did you forget about the potential death?”

“Fuck’s sake. I did.”

“I’ll get it.” I slowly and carefully walked over to the other side of the room with Kate keeping her arms out, ready to catch me if I fell. Keeping my back as straight as possible, I took my time to kneel down next to the sword, wincing as I went. I put the sheathe on and slowly stood up again. Through the pain, I sarcastically said, “See? No problem.”

David and Kate both chuckled before Kate beckoned me towards the door, saying, “Come on; your beloved Queen is waiting,” which sparked another snicker from both of them.

We exited the room and I found myself on a wooden balcony that overlooked the rest of the inn. The balcony extended in both directions with seven more doors in total that led to rooms similar to my own. I leant on the wooden barrier designed to stop people falling off to the floor below and into the communal area. The inn was nearly empty; on the ten wooden tables, only a couple of middle-aged men sat separately from each other nursing a metal tankard of ale as a tired barmaid sat behind the bar idly cleaning other metal and ceramic tankards with a dirty rag. The patrons’ clothes were thin and made of tattered and clearly itchy fabric and one of them wore a cowl that was once white but had turned to more of a brown colour from dirt. Neither of their dirt-covered faces were happy and they barely glanced at us as Kate and David helped me down the narrow creaky stairs at the far end of the inn.

The younger barmaid looked up at us as we reached the bottom. I recognised her as the woman who had brought me my food when Kate and David couldn’t. She was wearing a modest blue dress with a loose-fitting undergarment in a slightly dirtied white colour and her long dark hair seemed clumped from grease in certain places. She gave me a nice smile and spoke loudly with a high-pitched and thick West Country accent. “Mornin’ Mister Harding. Good to see you on yer feet again. Feeling better, I hear.”

“Thanks,” I replied, suddenly aware of how relatively posh my accent was, as Kate and David left my side and I moved over to the bar to lean on it and balance myself. “And thank you for putting me up here.”

“Oh don’t you worry about that.” She finished cleaning her tankard and moved over to a cask of ale behind her as she said, “In a terrible state, you were; bleedin’ an’ sleepin’. Least I could do to help.” She filled the tankard with ale and moved back to the bar to hand it to me. “On the ‘ouse. Been through a lot, you ‘ave.” She quickly began to clean two more tankards to pour drinks for Kate and David.

I glanced down into the dark liquid in the tankard, I really didn’t fancy it and tried to think of a way to get out of drinking it without seeming rude. I’d been drinking only it for the past few days as it was all she brought me. “Thank you, but you wouldn’t happen to have any water, would you?”

She gave me a slightly condescending look. “We don’t usually drink much water ‘round here, the ale’s cleaner.” I glanced over to Kate who made drinking motions at me. I took a small sip of the ale; it wasn’t terrible, but wasn’t as nice as even the mediocre ale we’d had at the King’s feast previously.

The barmaid handed Kate and David their drinks and continued on. “When I told me mum about you, she weren’t ‘appy.” She proceeded to do an impression of her mother by going into a somehow even higher pitched voice than her own; it sounded more like a _Monty Python_ impression of a woman than any real voice. “‘You can’t be givin’ out free rooms to anyone who stops by,’ she says. Well I tells her, ‘This mister ‘arding bloke is the King’s mate, we can’t just ignore ‘im.’” I politely nodded along as we all nursed the drinks in front of us. “She stopped complainin’ when the Crown’s money started coming in, anyway. Payin’ us double the going rate, she was!”

“Double?” I asked, thinking I’d misunderstood her strong accent.

“Oh aye. Her messenger said she were concerned somethin’ awful.”

I heard a small chuckle from Kate as she took another sip before I said, “I must tell her that you’ve treated me wonderfully. What was your name?”

“Oh where’re my manners?” She stretched her dirty hand out towards me, I reluctantly grabbed and shook it. “Sybilla Sawyer. It’s nice to finally have a chat. I were a bit afeared to talk before now. Y’know, after all that shoutin’ and what not, but you seem a nice enough fella.”

“Yeah,” I said as I awkwardly cleared my throat. “Sorry about that. I wasn’t quite myself.”

“Don’t think anythin’ of it. I’ve seen worse ‘ere some nights anyway.”

We chatted for a little while longer as we finished our drinks. She was nice and relatively easy to talk to if a bit full-on.

I realised that Sybilla could be one of the few unbiased people that I could speak to, having little connection to the Crown or events at large. “I’m not sure if it’s my place to ask,” I began, thinking I could get some information out of an actual resident of the city. “But do you know anything about the King’s son, Edward?”

She shook her head and said, “Don’t know nothing ‘bout that. He only had Mary, didn’t he?”

“Apparently he had a son before her, but with another woman.”

“Did you say Edward?” One of the men behind us spoke up with an equally strong but gruff West-Country accent. I turned and nodded tentatively at him. He finished his drink, stood up and stumbled towards us, clearly drunk. His hair was matted with the same dirt and grease that also covered his face and clothes. He got slightly too close and stared at me, his breath reeking of alcohol. “Yeah, I ‘eard of him. Most have forgotten, but I remember.” His hand slipped off the bar but he managed to regain his balance and put it back. “Happened ‘bout thirty years ago. He were the bastard son of Harold and some strumpet in the local brothel.” He spat slightly in my direction with every hard syllable. “He tried to argue that the bastard wasn’t his, but this whore wouldn’t leave it alone. She made sure the ‘ole city knew whose child it was. That child had a terrible life, he did. No one treated him with any respect and his mother could barely feed ‘im. Queen Edith even spat in his face when the mother showed ‘im to ‘er.

“Anyway, when the lad turned fifteen, Harold and Edith was fed up of the rumours and so had the mother executed and the child banished from the city. Never heard anything from it all after that. S’pose he didn’t make it. May God ‘ave mercy on his soul.”

“I ‘eard he went mad and lives with the wolves now,” The other man sat on a bench on the other side of the room spoke up in a similar but less rough accent. “Spends his days huntin’ ‘n his nights schemin’.”

The first man swayed around to look at him and dismissively said, “You ‘eard that, did ye? Well, I ‘eard that he can control men’s minds, so I wouldn’t believe the first thing you ‘ear.” He turned back to me after the second man looked back into his drink. “I didn’t tell you all this though,” he said while leaning in further and lowering his tone. “King would’ve ‘ad me ‘ead if he found out. Not sure how the new Queen would take it either.”

“Does she even know about him?” Kate asked.

“Dun’no. She’s only a young’un, though. King probably didn’t tell ‘er. Not takin’ any chances, though.”

“Thanks for telling us all of that,” I said before finishing the disgusting dregs of my drink. “But we’d best be off. Got important matters to attend to.”

“Aye, good luck to ye all.”

“Come back soon, won’t ye?” Sybilla called to us as we made motions towards the door.

“Definitely,” David said, stifling a giggle at the ridiculous encounter, as we neared the exit.

We said our goodbyes and left the inn as the man stumbled back to his place and proceeded to drink in silence again. We exited the inn and were briefly blinded by the bright midday sun directly above us. On the face of it, little had changed since I was last in the city, people were still going about their business as normal and were trying their best to ignore us.

We moved towards the looming castle, going back up the road we had previously gone down to leave the city. The uneven path was tough for me to walk on but David and Kate helped me during the multiple occasions that I stumbled and nearly fell. The hill up to the castle was gruelling for me but we made it up in the end and took a brief break at the castle wall as we explained who we were and where we were going to the castle guards.

Two of the guards at the front gate to the castle let us in and began to escort us to the Queen once they recognised Kate and me. They led us to the gardens around the back of the castle where they had a vast array of beautiful plants were growing. We were on an elevated stone floor that surrounded the castle and steps led down from it to a large gravel path that ran down the centre. It was flanked on both sides by vibrant green hedgerows which had several wooden archways placed in the hedges that led to six clearly marked out flowerbeds that each contained a huge array of vividly coloured flowers, none of which I could name. The beds were awash with purples, yellows, reds and more, all arranged into neat squares. Several stone benches sat along the central path and in the areas with the flowerbeds.

Queen Mary was in the closest flower bed area, sat on a bench that faced towards the castle. She was wearing a huge purple and white dress that was covered in various jewels and lace to the point where it must have been a full-time job trying not to catch them on anything. She was staring into space, but soon noticed us on the raised stone patio and beckoned us over.

“Tell you what,” David whispered to me. “She _is_ fit.”

“Time and a place,” I sternly whispered back.

Once we reached the arch that led to the Queen, one of the guards stopped me and said, “We’d best take that weapon from you, sir.”

“I wouldn’t advise that,” I replied quickly, sincerely hoping that he wouldn’t reach for the sword of his own volition.

He raised an eyebrow at me to the brim of his helmet. “Is that a threat?”

Realising how my reply sounded, I hastily answered. “No, I promise not. It’s hard to explain, but it can result in death.”

He put his hand on his sheathed sword and said, “That sounds like a threat to me.”

“Leave him be!” Mary shouted from behind the guard and still sat on the bench. “He can keep it.”

He glared at me with frustration, moved his hand away from his blade, and muttered, “As you wish, your Majesty.”

“Well done, Captain cordial,” David sarcastically muttered to me as we walked through the archway.

“You two can leave us,” The Queen said to the guards and she beckoned them away with her hand. Despite their protests, they left us three with the Queen and returned to their posts. “It is good to see you again, Master Harding,” she said with utmost dignity. “How are you faring?”

Surprised with her sudden formality, I quietly responded with, “I’ve been better, but I’m ok.”

“I am glad to hear you’re faring better than before.” She looked at Kate and David. “I apologise if this is rude, but do you think we could have a moment to ourselves?”

The two looked at each other and then me suggestively as they tried to hold back a giggle. Kate said, “Certainly, your Majesty,” before looking at me and saying, “We’ll meet you in our chamber.” As soon as they left the area, Mary stood up and leant to look around the hedge as they walked around it and out of sight.

Once they were out of sight, she glanced around the castle to see if anyone else was nearby and, once confirming that no one was, ran up to me and wrapped her arms around me in a huge hug. The force of the hug hurt my stomach wound and I let out a small whimper of pain, making her immediately loosen her grip slightly. “I’m so happy that you are ok, Mark. I was worried about you.”

Through the still-present pain, I said, “Good to see you too. Could we ease up on the hug, though?”

She pulled back and apologetically looked at me. “Sorry, I was a bit overexcited.” She gestured to the bench she had been sat on. “Come and sit with me.” I obliged and staggered over to her bench where we sat next to each other. She looked at me, but I looked up at where we had just come from and saw Kate and David walking away, both giving me a thumbs-up as they want. I ignored them and turned to Mary.

“Thank you so much for paying for me to stay in that inn. Sybilla was very good to me, and _very_ happy with the amount you were paying.”

“I am just sorry that I couldn’t visit you, but coronations are a lot of work.”

“I can imagine.” I thought about Harold and began to talk in a more solemn tone. “I’m sorry about your father. I wish there was more I could have done.”

She looked at the floor and sighed. “I don’t blame you. He should not have left the city. I told him not to go but he didn’t listen.”

“How are you dealing with it?”

She thought about her answer for a short while. “I think I’m ok. I miss him, but I cannot say that he was the most attentive father.” She looked back at me and gave me a weak smile. “I will be fine. I have far too much else to worry about anyway.”

“Ok, just know that I’m here if you need to talk about anything.”

“Thank you, I appreciate it.” Her expression lightened as she said her next words. “What I _really_ want you to talk about is your sword. I have been told that you used it.”

“You heard right.” Her eyes widened, likely having not believed what she had been told by others. “It was really weird.”

“What happened?” She asked excitedly.

“I got really bloody angry, and it somehow worked. I don’t know if that’s what actually triggered it or not, but it happened like that both times.”

“It worked _twice_?” Her expression and tone were of pure amazement.

Proudly, and with something of an involuntary smug smirk, I replied, “Oh yeah.”

“You will have to show me some day.”

“I don’t think seeing me that angry is worth it, personally.”

She seemed to mentally debate this for a while before giving up and asking her next question. “So, what do you plan to do about the dastardly character that gave you this?” She indicated to my stomach wound, clearly having not been told the whole story of what happened to me.

I awkwardly cleared my throat and thought about my answer. “Not… Much.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I plan to leave him alone.”

She struggled to form words amongst her surprise. “Why? Do you not want revenge?”

“Not really.” When she showed even more confusion, I continued. “Do you have any idea what he did to me?”

“He stabbed you, correct?”

“That and so much more.”

Her voice started to quiver with slight worry as if she was afraid to ask any further. “What else?”

I thought about how to phrase the events carefully. “He did something to my mind. He took control of me and convinced me that someone very dear to me had been killed by Kate and David. I shouted at them, swore at them, and threatened them until Kate had to pour her heart out to me to break me out of his influence. It was fucking traumatic and I can’t go through it again. I just can’t.”

“Oh, Mark,” the Queen began, struggling to find the correct words. “I am just so sorry. I had no idea.”

I sighed, wanted the conversation to be over and the matter dealt with. “It’s ok. I just don’t want to face him again.”

“What about Sarthe, though? I thought that he wanted to destroy it.”

I thought carefully about my answer, making sure that I said enough that Mary would drop it. “He said that if we stayed out of his business, he was satisfied with having killed both me and your father. Fortunately, he didn’t count on me surviving my wound.”

She was thinking deeply from the opposite end, clearly trying to think of way to get me to continue the crusade against Edward. “What if he finds out that you’re still alive?”

“Then we’ve got a problem, but he shouldn’t if I do nothing to wrong him.”

“Are you sure he’s reasonable enough to stick to his word?”

“He did seem a bit unhinged at the time, and I never did actually witness him saying all of this.” I answered quickly, but deeply regretted saying that as soon as I finished the sentence. I knew that Mary would stop at nothing to convince me after that.

She thought for a moment, clearly carefully wording her sentence. “I realise that what he did to you was horrible, but I do think that you should consider doing something about him. There is simply no telling what he could do.”

“I don’t think I can. He put so little effort into ruining me, I’m just not strong enough to fight him.”

She had another moment of thought as she stared into nothing. “My father said that you are naturally gifted in all three of the artefacts. Is that true?”

“I have no evidence to say one way or the other, but that’s what he told me as well.”

“I may have an idea. Follow me.” She stood up and walked to the archway, expecting me to follow.

“Walking’s not my strong point right now,” I said as I clutched my stomach and staggered up. “Can’t you just tell me here?”

“I need to check something. Please just come with me.” She moved over to me, looped her arm through mine and walked with me towards the castle. I protested a little more but didn’t have much choice in the matter.

We moved all of the way around the castle and through the front doors. “I don’t mean to sound selfish,” I said as we passed through the familiar hallways of the castle, “but this really isn’t my fight. I just want to get home.”

Continuing to carefully word her sentences, she replied, “I think it has to be your fight now. We can try to help you get home, but we cannot promise anything. If this man lives, we are all in danger.”

I stayed quiet as she led me through the corridors and hallways and I mulled over what she had just said, not wanting to admit that she was right. I was stuck on this island and there was no guarantee that Edward would just leave us alone. Considering what he had allegedly gone through, he likely still harboured severe resentment towards the people of Sarthe.

She led me through the familiar huge wooden doors of the study; the first place the King had taken me after I wound up in the castle’s jail. The sunlight coming through massive windows on the far side completely lit the room up and showed how much dust was floating in the air from the recent lack of use. Aside from an empty inkpot with a dry quill, the desk in the centre was empty and every book on the bookshelves either side had been neatly arranged.

“Please take a seat while I find the book,” Mary said as she indicated to the small wooden chair behind the desk and left my side to root through the bookshelves. I was pretty sure that it was Harold’s seat so I felt strange sitting on it, but was more sick of standing through the pain and so obliged and relaxed into it.

After just over a minute of careful searching, she returned with an old book entitled, _Henersey – A Change in Natural Law_. I recognised its severely dog-eared and yellowing pages as well as the disintegrating leather binding as the book that the late King was originally getting his information on the diamonds from. She delicately placed it in front of me and flicked through the book, looking for a specific page. “This book was written in 1483. It covers everything that my ancestors knew at the time about everything to do with the diamonds. It is still the most complete source of information we have on them.”

Worried about my impending responsibilities, I asked, “What are you looking for?”

“My father briefly spoke of the third object, the amulet.”

“Amulet of Sight, right? I saw its empty plinth in the same place that I got the sword.”

“Yes, that’s it.” She concentrated on finding the page again before exclaiming, “Aha! Here it is.” She pointed at the start of chapter fourteen in the book. ‘The Amulet of Sight – A most dangerous vision’ was the chapter’s name, written in large and clear letters at the top of the page. It was accompanied by a small drawing of the amulet; an elliptical shape with several rings converging in the centre that recessed into the design. While not being the most exciting design, it was covered in similar intricate and beautiful carvings to those on both the sword and shield.

Alongside the drawing, the text was completely illegible to me. Not only was it written in full old-English, the fluid handwriting meant that the ink often merged two letters and even words together. Mary seemed to have no trouble reading it though.

“What does it say?” I asked, sparking a slightly condescending look from Mary as it must have seemed as though I was illiterate.

“It says that ‘those that lacked the ability to use the diamonds were unable to use the amulet without eventually losing their minds. The afflicted often claimed seeing themselves die in a number of increasingly gruesome ways.’”

“Great,” I said sarcastically. “What about those of us ‘fortunate’ enough to be able to use the diamonds?”

She quickly scanned the text and stopped when she was about halfway down the page. “It does not seem to say what you could do with it. ‘Due to the potential danger to others, we will avoid explaining the amulet’s ability in an attempt to dissuade those that would wish to use it for the wrong reasons.’” She skimmed the rest of the text and showed a flicker of recognition before summarising it for me. “It says that the amulet has been hidden away, far from Sarthe. The only way to access it is for someone with the gift to enter its home. Access to the location of this place was allegedly governed by the King at the time.”

“So that should fall to you now, right?”

“Yes. My father did mention something about a secret within the castle to do with this.” She thought for a moment as she tried to remember what he’d told her. She looked down at the desk in front of me and pointed out one of the drawers that had a suspect keyhole in it. She reached into her clothing around her neck and withdrew a key on a necklace.

“Isn’t that the same key that the King used to open the chamber with the plinths?” I asked as I suddenly recognised it.

“Yes. I feel that it could be worth a try.” She awkwardly reached past me, put the key in the hole, and turned it, resulting in a satisfying _clunk_ as mechanism shifted. She tugged at the stiff drawer and eventually got it open, revealing an aging folded piece of brown parchment. Pushing the book aside and spreading the parchment across the table revealed a large black iron key tucked inside a map of the city and its surrounding area dated back to 1426. At the time of the map’s creation, it seemed as though the city only had its original wall and the castle was little more than a small stone fort. The map extended far to the north, where it showed just how vast The Dene was. Whether it was smaller now was another matter, but its borders still seemed accurate from what we had seen. Nestled far into the forest was a small and easily missed circle highlighting a vague position.

“Is that where the amulet is supposed to be?” I asked as I pointed at the circle.

“I would assume so. There is nothing else out that way.”

“How far away do you reckon that is?”

She mentally debated this for some time as she looked back and forth at the size of the city on the map and the size of the forest. “It looks as though it would be a couple of days’ travel. The map may not be entirely to scale, however.”

I sat back in the chair, crossed my arms and sighed as I thought things over. “I don’t want to go chasing myths.”

“Are you doubting that the amulet exists?”

“Not in the slightest; I’ve seen enough shit to believe that. I just don’t want to waste God-knows how many days in trying to find something in a place that was last seen six hundred years ago.”

“I understand, Mark, and I certainly wouldn’t expect you to go in your current condition. I do think, however, that you need to do this. We need to be prepared for if this person comes back and I feel that this is the only way we can do that.”

“Why did your father not tell me about this, then?”

“I don’t think that he wanted to use the amulet until unless it was absolutely necessary. He said that there are already too many unnatural forces at play.” She rearranged her dress slightly so that she could lower herself to my level and look me in the eyes. “Please do this, Mark.”

I exhaled as I found no way out of this. “I’ll have to convince Kate. I probably won’t live without her and we kind of agreed that we’d leave him to his business.”

Apparently taking that as a yes, she reached her arms around me and gave me a big, painful hug. “Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to both me and Sarthe.” The hug lasted slightly longer than I would have expected and I began to feel uncomfortable, and not just from the pain.

She eventually retracted and looked deeply into my eyes. I awkwardly cleared my throat, looked down at the book, and stuttered as I said, “Is there a bit in this about the shield?”

Slightly disappointed, she moved the map to one side, pulled the book back into the centre and began to flick through the pages. “I believe so. Why?”

“Might as well know something about what I’m supposed to be fighting. Also, the other two things seem to have nasty side-effects when someone unlike me uses them; the amulet being madness and the sword being, well, death. Maybe the shield does something similar, something that we can use.”

“Good thinking.” Feeling slightly proud, I watched her turn page after page until she finally came across it. The page was entitled ‘The Shield of Control – The Power to Influence a Million Minds’ and had a large sketch of the shield that I was all too familiar with. “Here you are,” Mary said, expecting me to read the incomprehensible writing.

I made a concerted effort to read it but, by what felt like the fifteenth apostrophe in ten words, I gave up. “I can’t make heads or tails of this. Can you read it to me again?”

She let out a faintly audible sigh, likely both from my ignorance and consistent use of phrases that were unfamiliar to her, but obliged nonetheless. She skipped over the basic explanation of the shield’s power as it allegedly told us nothing new. “‘Those ungifted in the use of the diamonds have shown a distinct divide between their actions before and after its first use. Since these later actions are usually significantly more aggressive, it appears that the shield controls the user to commit heinous acts that are buried within the user’s deepest depths of their mind.’ So, the shield is controlling him? Not the other way around?”

I thought for a moment over what she had just said. “I guess so, or it’s at least making him do what he wished he could do. That makes a lot of sense. And you’re right to think we should deal with him now; who knows how much more aggressive Edward will get.”

Mary raised an eyebrow. “Edward?”

“The person behind all of this. Did you not know that?”

“No. Who is he?”

“Oh dear.” I realised that I shouldn’t have gone down this route as I now felt that I had to explain Edward’s story to her. “He’s your brother. Kind of,” I awkwardly worded, wishing that I had said something less specific. Her eyes widened as she tried to say words that wouldn’t escape her mouth.

Eventually, she stuttered as she quietly asked, “My brother?”

I nodded before saying, “Half-brother.” I went on to tentatively explain everything that Edward and the drunk man in the inn had told me, making sure to preface the latter by explaining just how drunk the he was. She patiently listened and absorbed the information, looking deeply into my eyes as she did. Her concentration was slightly unnerving, but it was only right to tell her the whole story; she deserved to know. I wrapped up and said, “I assumed that you would have been told by our one surviving escort’s story of the events.”

She was silent for a few seconds as she looked away and thought about everything. She absentmindedly replied, “He said that he didn’t know who he was.” Her eyes darted back to me. “So, my father hid his own son from me?”

I nodded and, as quickly as I could given my condition, stood up and said, “Why don’t you sit down? You seem like you need it.” I leant on the table for balance as I offered it to her.

She quickly slumped down on the chair and exhaled as she put her elbow on the table and rested her forehead on the same arm’s hand. “Thank you,” she said obligingly, clearly trained to be civil from birth. “I just don’t know what to think. He told me about this devious, disgusting creature of a man that was constantly plotting our downfall. I cannot believe he is one of our own.” She looked back up at me. “You’re not going to kill him, are you?”

Slightly stunned, I responded, “What do you mean?”

“You can’t kill him. He doesn’t deserve it.” Her speech sounded slightly more frantic.

“You were all for it a few minutes ago,” I quietly pointed out.

“Please, he is my brother. It is the shield’s fault. Take that away.”

“I don’t think you understand how dangerous he is. I can’t just ‘take away’ his shield. He’ll kill me.”

“None of this is his doing, though.”

I thought about it. The thought of actually killing him hadn’t even crossed my mind until this conversation. I knew it was the plan, but I didn’t actually think about the act of murder. The slightly disconnected nature of the sword’s power seemed to make the idea a bit easier; turning a man to ash somehow felt less like murder than a premeditated stab. “Do we even know that taking the shield away will fix him?”

She opened her mouth, clearly about to answer ‘yes’ without thinking, before holding herself back and looking down at the book. “I’m not sure.” She stared at the pages before her and traced the words that she was reading with her finger. “It says that, ‘It is unknown whether or not taking the shield away from the afflicted ungifted user removes the curse; to our knowledge, no one has ever retrieved the shield before the user had perished.’” She mulled over the words for a moment. “So, it is not impossible?” She asked hopefully.

“It’s not impossible, but that indicates to me that it’s incredibly difficult to take the shield away from the person using it without killing them.” She looked away from me and stared at the book. Feeling the mounting pressure, I noncommittally added, “I’ll try my best, but I can’t promise anything. At this point, I can’t even promise that I’ll succeed at all.”

I quickly finished my information scouring with the Queen and made motions back to my chamber. I did want to read through the passage about my sword, but I felt that I could do that on another day, one where Mary hadn’t just found out that she had a brother that I had been tasked to kill by her own father. Understandably, she needed some time to think things over. Regardless, due to my condition, I couldn’t leave for The Dene for some time so I was more than happy to grant her that.

Through several breaks, leaning on walls for stability, and only slightly getting lost along the way since this was the first time I didn’t have an escort, I eventually reached my chamber and found Kate and David sat chatting on a couple of the chairs facing each other.

“Took your bloody time,” Kate said as I walked in a closed the door behind me.

I pulled up a chair as I began to explain. “We had a long discussion about the whole situation.”

“And?” She asked in a hopeful tone. “Are we off the hook?”

“Not exactly.” Both Kate and David showed visible annoyance but let me continue. “We can’t just leave him to his thing. It’s not safe.”

“What do you mean?” Kate asked as her frustration grew. “He said it himself; he won’t bother us if we don’t bother him.”

I stuttered a little, feeling a confrontation brewing. “I know, but we can’t trust that. He’s completely mental and unstable.”

“I thought you were on our side, Mark,” David interjected angrily. “What changed? Did Queenie suck you off or something?”

I ignored that comment and went on to explain everything we’d found out about the shield. They were extremely sceptical at the start, but I could see them coming around as I explained more of the story.

“So, he’s just going to get more and more aggressive?” Kate asked once I’d finished. I nodded and gave them a small amount of time to think before Kate continued. “What can we do to stop him? He pushed our shit in last time.”

“There’s this amulet, the last of the three special items, that should help in some way. We’ve got a map that shows where it is. That’s all we’ve got, really.”

“What does it do?” David quickly questioned with genuine interest.

“No idea. According to its name, something to do with sight or vision,” I replied noncommittally, making David huff slightly as he leant back in his chair.

“Is it far away?” Kate reluctantly asked.

I nodded, “We think it’s a few days’ walk away.”

“I suppose if it’s similar to your sword then it’ll help.” She thought for a moment before sighing loudly. “Fucking hell. This is bollocks.”

“I’m so sorry to drop this on you, Kate, but can you come with me when I go? I don’t think I’ll survive long otherwise.”

“Of course I will. If it has to be done, I want to be there to help.”

“I will as well,” David quickly added. While I appreciated the gesture, I wasn’t sure I wanted him along. He was a good friend but I didn’t trust my own skills let alone his, and I certainly didn’t want to be the reason for his death. I couldn’t exactly ban him from helping me, though.

“Great,” Kate said sarcastically as she smirked. “Two children to look after.”


	13. Sight

**Morning, 22 nd July **

“As soon as the sun starts to go down,” Kate began as we left the city limits and moved towards the forest. “As _soon_ as the sun starts to go down,” she reiterated, “we head straight for a large tree or a small cave; one where we can block line-of-sight with the sheets that the Queen gave us. We’ll light up the area and stay there until morning. We won’t take any risks and we’ll get to this place and back as quickly as possible. If we hear or see anything that could possibly be Edward, we run, hide, whatever; we just get away from him. Keep your swords ready at all times and don’t try any of the nonsense in your stories, David.”

He was about to act defensive and refute her claims of him lying, before he decided against it and simply said, “Fine.”

“Is all of that clear, you two?”

“Yes,” we answered in unison, feeling a little like school children.

“Good.” She began to speak specifically to David, “Quick refresher course; skeletons use bows, creepers explode when they get close, zombies and giant spiders do as you’d expect. Zombies and skeletons burn in sunlight, spiders aren’t hostile in the day, and creepers are aggressive all of the time.”

He took a few moments to absorb the information before confidently saying, “Ok, I knew all of that anyway.”

Kate stopped him by aggressively grasping his shoulders and looking him dead in the eyes. “This is fucking serious, David. Leave your bullshit behind because you could actually die out here.” She stared at him, expecting an answer, until he just nervously nodded.

I was using the map and a compass to guide us to the Amulet’s location, but unfortunately there were few landmarks to let us know that we were on the right track. We didn’t even know what we were looking for. All we had to go on was that it was on the left-hand side of the valley, so we were going to stick to that as we moved towards it.

We each carried a leather sack strapped across ourselves that contained salted meats wrapped in cloth, a few lengths of fabric sheets, a tough leather waterskin full of almost clean water, several torches as well as a small wooden tinderbox containing a sharp chunk of flint and piece of steel that had been shaped to easily grip while starting a fire.

“This armour looks terrible,” David grumbled, shuffling uncomfortably in it as we entered the forest once more.

“I don’t think they had fashion in mind when they made it, mate,” I replied.

“I know, but they could have made it _slightly_ less shit. It doesn’t even look good for their standards.”

Kate wore her normal leather clothing that she’d always had, whereas David and I had been outfitted in a leather tunic each that didn’t protect us a huge amount, but gave us some sort of confidence. Kate and David had been given a sharp, if boring, iron sword each and Kate had managed to convince Mary to let her take a longbow from her armoury with a quiver of twenty arrows to replace those lost when we were first taken to Sarthe. During my days of recovery, Kate tried to teach David how to fight with a sword; he was a little slow on the uptake but she got him to an acceptable standard. We were all nervous, as evidenced by Kate’s long-winded safety speech, but the equipment did make us feel slightly better.

A few hours of little conversation passed without event. We all kept a nervous watch over our surroundings and made sure that we weren’t following the same route that we had previously taken with King Harold just in case that was Edward’s stomping ground in particular.

“So, how come you get a bow?” David asked Kate, clearly bored of the silence. “I want a bow. Sounds way better than fighting things face-to-face.”

“Because I can actually use it,” she bluntly replied.

“How hard can it actually be? Point and shoot, right?”

“It’s not like a bow you’d get at a fair ground or even a compound bow. It’s tough. You want to try?”

“Of course. You mind, Mark?”

“Not in the slightest,” I replied. “I don’t mind taking a break to watch you fail.”

We stopped in a small clearing. Kate pointed out a tree to aim for. At about ten feet away, it wasn’t a particularly hard target to hit.

I sat against a different tree out of the way to watch as Kate armed herself with the bow strung across herself and an arrow from the quiver on her back. David left his equipment next to me and stood ready to take his turn, watching Kate’s movements intensely. Holding the bow with her left hand, she held the arrow in place, pulled back the string, and aimed at the tree. She took a deep breath to compose herself for a few seconds. Letting the string go, it loudly launched the arrow forward straight and true with incredible speed at the tree, where it penetrated a small amount into the bark and remained stuck there. She let out a controlled exhale before pulling another arrow out and holding it and the bow out towards David. She grinned and said, “Your turn.”

Confidently, he took the bow and arrow as he said, “Easy.” Kate sat down next to me as he emulated her as much as he could. He got to the point where he was about to pull the string back, but found that it was much more difficult than he initially thought. He let it go prematurely and the arrow simply fell the ground in front of him. Kate and I laughed as he said, “One more,” and picked the arrow back up. He held the arrow tight as he pulled the string back further. We could see him straining through his facial expression and how much his hands were shaking. He gasped loudly as he released the string and the arrow flew towards the tree. The angle initially looked good, but the lack of power quickly showed as the projectile dropped out of the air and struck the tree at the bottom of the trunk. It didn’t penetrate and only bounced off before landing on the grass below.

Through laboured breaths, David said, “Fair play. That’s tough.” Kate stood up and continued to laugh as she took the bow off him and moved to take the two arrows back. “You must have forearms like fucking tree trunks.”

“They’re alright. Being on this bloody island for as long as I have teaches you a lot.”

“Too fucking right.” David replied while stretching his arms out. “My arms are killing me.”

“You’re a historian, David,” I commented as he moved over to me to retrieve his belongings. “Surely you should know that archery’s pretty difficult.”

“I learn about the politics mainly, not the intricacies of medieval combat. You don’t need to shoot an apple off a baby’s head to get a degree.”

“Fair point,” I conceded before grinning and adding, “That’s probably to get the masters.”

We took a small rest so that the feeling in David’s arms could come back to him and to generally rest our feet as we’d been walking for a fair amount of time. Before long, however, we were back on the move. The archery break wasn’t exactly planned and we wanted to get this done as soon as possible.

The sun began to set, so we found a moderately sized alcove in the hills on the western side of the valley. The darkness inside made us nervous, but our worries were abated when Kate lit a torch and looked carefully inside. It was only about twenty feet deep and had a small entrance, near perfect for what we wanted. We wedged several lit torches in the ground around us, moved into the alcove and tied the sheets up with string to the top of the entrance so that they draped down and covered it nearly completely. It didn’t matter that they weren’t particularly robust nor inconspicuous, it was simply about breaking line-of-sight. We started a campfire outside using dry grass and sticks of varying sizes that we found on the floor and broke off trees so that we could cook our preserved dinner quickly before heading back into the relative safety of the alcove.

We agreed to take watches while we were sleeping since we were in such a precarious position. I was up first, listening to the unnerving sounds of the hordes outside. None of them came close to our entrance as they were warded off by the light, but it still put me on edge.

When David and I swapped over, I made some form of small talk in hushed tones, whispering, “So, being in the city must be your dream, right?” He raised an eyebrow in dumbfounded confusion, which I could only just make out due to my extended time in the darkness. When he gave no response, I expanded on my statement, “You know, living in an actual medieval city. Don’t all of you history types want to do this sort of thing?”

Seeing my point, he returned to a normal expression and replied, “To an extent, I guess. I’d rather it be in better circumstances though. Plus, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but this isn’t exactly normal. You’re in possession of diamonds forged in a literal hell and a sword that shoots lightning. I can’t write a paper on that without being sectioned.”

He had a point. For some reason, I’d pushed the supernatural elements of this world to the back of my mind. “Yeah, fair enough,” I conceded.

“Still,” he continued, possibly to spare my feelings. “It’s interesting to know how much historians have actually gotten right.” He chuckled to himself, “Even if I can never write about what we’ve seen here without somehow providing sources.”

Kate had taken the last watch and woke us up as the sun began to rise. Once David and I had come to our senses, she began instructing us.

“We’re going to wait for a moment and listen for any movement outside,” she whispered. “There’s a lot of trees, so there could be any number of monsters out there under the shade. If you see any, let me handle them.”

“Can’t Mark just smite the fuckers?” David asked in a joke that was thinly veiling genuine hope.

“You have no idea how difficult it is and how much it takes out of me,” I replied bluntly.

“Plus, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we want to use this bollocks as little as possible,” Kate added.

“Exactly,” I agreed as David reluctantly nodded along. We started hearing the pained cries of zombies burning up in the daylight outside. Kate pulled up her neckerchief as I pulled my shirt over my nose and turned to David to say, “You might want to do the same.”

“Why?” He raised an eyebrow but inched his hand to his shirt’s collar, likely assuming that we were to be trusted but still interested.

“Remember that New Year party I had in my first year flat at uni? When Tom threw up on the floor behind the radiator and didn’t tell anyone, so it was left stewing on the floor all night?” He slowly nodded with increasing worry. “It’s worse than that.” He immediately pulled his shirt over his nose and backed away from the entrance. The wind was blowing down the valley, so the smell never ended up drifting our way, but we remained careful of it nonetheless.

We waited until the noises stopped; the skeletons’ bones clanged to the ground and zombies slumped to the floor as their flames slowly dissipated. Kate slowly moved one of the sheets out of the way to have a look at the forest before us. “There’s only one zombie under a tree as far as I can see. Nothing dangerous.”

“Nothing dangerous?” David repeated incredulously and slightly too loudly. “I don’t know what kind of bizarre version of this place you live in, but I would call zombies dangerous.”

“It won’t bother us unless we get too close to it. It knows that it’ll die in the sunlight,” she replied sternly. I nodded along, happy to feel knowledgeable for once.

“Can’t you just kill it anyway? Shoot it with your bow or something?” He persisted.

Kate and I started to take down the sheets and pack them away as she said, “It’s just not worth it. It’s easier to leave it be.” David reluctantly agreed and helped us pack up the small camp. Once everything was packed away, we cautiously left our temporary home. Kate held her bow with an arrow nocked and at the ready as David and I followed with our swords drawn.

As Kate predicted, the zombie didn’t bother us, choosing instead to longingly watch us move freely away from its position of safety. We cautiously continued on for the rest of the day, constantly watching our backs despite the beaming sunshine. Once we passed one of the few landmarks on the map, a small passage through the western hills, we made camp as we were still a fair distance away. The lack of suitable caves was disheartening, but a massive tree more than made up for it. We could remain out of sight amongst the thick leaves and still be relatively comfortable on the large branches. We placed a few torches around the site to dissuade any intrigued monsters, but we still didn’t feel particularly safe. Their sickening sounds were far too audible and made it difficult to find sleep, but we had to force ourselves if we wanted to be alert for whatever awaited us with the amulet. Somehow still awake after taking the final watch the night before, Kate took the first watch in the tree. I took the second, leaving David with the final watch.

Kate and David seemed to be sleeping peacefully, balanced somewhat precariously on large branches with their backs against the tree’s trunk. The torches below were successfully warding off the monsters that were definitely nearby and, while the night was cool, there wasn’t much of a breeze so it was a fairly comfortable temperature. I did resent having to stay awake for hours just in case something happened, but it was important.

I relaxed into my sitting position against the tree trunk a little more as I considered my situation. It was hard to believe that it had only been just over a month since we had arrived on the island. The experience itself was definitely overall negative, but I had to wonder whether I as a person was becoming better or worse from this. I certainly felt more capable than before, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Getting desensitised to gore and weapon usage isn’t normal.

I tried not to think about it. I couldn’t change my situation. If I wanted to get off the island, I would have to play along to keep us safe while we figured it out.

The rest of my watch was equally uneventful. I could here a monster occasionally moving in the distance, but nothing came close. As soon as it felt fair, I woke David up so that he could begin his watch and I could get some sleep.

“Fuck!” David screamed instinctually, jolting me awake as he collapsed off the branch next to mine and plummeted to floor about twenty feet below. The sun had almost completely risen over the obscured horizon and bathed the sky in its warm orange glow. The flanking hills’ shadows covered the area but were quickly dissipating.

As I struggled to make sense of what was happening, Kate was already awake and scanning the surroundings for the source of the threat. While I saw that her gaze had latched onto a target and that she’d started to move to a position to deal with it, I failed to exit my confused daze, instead watching her and not paying attention to my surroundings at all.

Readying the bow that she’d kept on her person, she quickly shot an arrow that streaked past me with dazzling speed. She seemed annoyed and quickly nocked another arrow as I started to gain an awareness of my surroundings and looked down to the ground where David had landed. He was lying on his back and clutching a bloody wound on his leg. An arrow that clearly caused the injury lay discarded on the floor, tainting a small amount of the green grass with his blood. He groaned loudly and whimpered slightly as he also struggled to make sense of the situation.

Another arrow struck the branch that I was lying on, the loud thud startling me as I ineptly tried to move out of its way. Unsure of exactly what was happening, I suddenly found myself rushing towards the green floor. I slammed down onto the ground shoulder first and let out a confused and pained cry to match David’s whimpering. The ground was soft and damp with morning dew, but the impact of the drop sent a shockwave through my body that felt unbearable.

I heard the familiar clattering of bones knocking into each other as I held my shoulder tightly and continued to fail to make sense of the situation. Despite making some pathetic effort to observe my surroundings, I couldn’t figure anything out through my pain and lassitude. I lay helplessly on the floor for an undeterminable amount of time before a hand grabbed my other shoulder and forcefully shoved me to my back. Groaning and clutching my aching shoulder, I found Kate condescendingly looking down with her arm stretched towards me.

“David got hit in the leg, but the leather took most of the brunt,” she said succinctly.

“Took most of the brunt my arse!” David shouted back. As Kate hauled me up, I found him leaning on our tree and inspecting a small puncture in the leather on his upper thigh. When I clearly didn’t show quite enough concern, he said, “You try being shot, then you can talk.”

After quickly bandaging the small cut and deciding not to inform David of the arrow that had catalysed my introduction to Kate, we moved on. I initially helped David walk, but he soon realised that he could quite competently do it himself with only a marginal increase in difficulty.

. . .

The sun was threatening to disappear behind the hills of the valley as we stared at the unassuming door. We’d almost missed it as it was nestled at the back of a small cluster of trees. Set into the hill’s almost vertical stone face, weathered bricks, joined in the middle by a suffering keystone, described the outline of the round-topped black iron door. An iron handle lay on the floor beneath it, slowly being reclaimed by nature as the weeds covered most of the simple construction. I spotted the large keyhole just below the clear spots where the handle was once attached.

“That can’t be it, can it?” David questioned in disbelief.

I retrieved the iron key from my bag and stepped cautiously towards the door as I muttered, “If the shoe fits…”

Kate and David drew their weapons as I reached the door and tentatively pushed the key into the hole. I wanted to give up immediately when there was a small amount of resistance, but the key jumped in and sat in place. I initially struggled to turn the key and almost gave up again but, once I put some force in, a loud clunk accompanied the key jerking 180 degrees round which let me freely rotate it the rest of the way. Metal shifted on the other side of the door and eventually the key stopped turning.

I drew my own sword and tugged at the stuck key to open the door. The bottom scraped little by little across its stone floor whereas the top jerked away from its archway and threatened to break the rusting top hinge. Once I recruited Kate’s help to tug at the door, I jammed my sword into the brief gap and managed to pry it past the stone floor so that it swung lazily open, revealing the simple bar that the lock had lifted up when I turned the key. The door’s impact on the cliff face seemed to shatter its top hinge and the door slumped loudly onto the floor, only being held by one last suffering lower hinge.

Largely ignoring that development however, we gazed into the small room that the door had just revealed. It was little more than a plain, unlit, stone cube of a room with a small vaguely square-shaped hole in the centre that featured a dubious wooden ladder.

“The sun’s setting,” Kate observed. “Let’s do this tomorrow.”

David began to agree and walk away before I interrupted, “No. You two find shelter, I’m doing this now.”

“What? Why?” Kate asked, turning me away from the doorway to face her. “We can all go if we do it in the morning. Plus, it’ll still be dark when you get out.”

“I don’t think that you two should go in either way. You know what my sword is supposed to do to you guys, who knows what the thing in there will do?” I paused, observing their unconvinced faces. “We can’t waste more time out here. I want to get this done.” I pointed in the direction of a small alcove we had seen a short distance away as I continued, “You two camp out back there, I’ll either see you later or in the morning.” I moved towards the doorway to examine the situation but couldn’t see anything in the pitch-darkness of the hole.

From behind me I heard Kate rummaging around her supplies as she said, “I can’t say I completely agree with you, but I see where you’re coming from.” The warm light of a torch erupted behind me as Kate thrust it into my hand. “Take this. We’ll see you soon.”

They watched as I prepared to step onto the ladder, weighing up how difficult one-handed climbing would be. “If I don’t come back by morning…”

“Nope!” David interrupted. “You’re not doing all of that. You’re coming back.”

“Fine,” I replied, rethinking my approach to the sentence. “But don’t come looking for me down here. I don’t think that that would end well.”

“Fuck that,” he replied immediately, accompanied by a determined nod from Kate. “I’m going to drag you out if it kills me.”

After requesting that what remained of the door be pushed back into its doorway to ward off curious monsters, I tentatively stepped onto the ladder and began my claustrophobic descent into the abyss. The ladder’s creaks echoed down the, fortunately, slowly widening shaft.

As the torch’s light touched the uneven stone floor below, I felt a weaker rung beneath my foot bend out of shape. I froze, hoping to have a few more seconds of thinking time. Putting more pressure on the stronger rung above with my other foot, I slowly lifted my bottom foot away safely. Holding my stance for a moment, I breathed a sigh of relief.

My face colliding with the lower rung and breaking the wood completely was the point at which I realised that my safety rung had also snapped under my foot and sent me flying to the floor. I let go of the torch in my hand as I struggled to think in what felt like an endless fall to a relatively close floor.

Finally, my back hit the solid floor and I heard something important snap and break within me. I forced my eyes shut and screamed out of fear rather than the pain that seemed strangely absent. When I eventually opened my eyes, I found myself staring at the ladder that I was gripping with the same single foot and hand. Before I had time to think, my safety rung snapped once more and let me fall back towards the floor. While letting go of the torch, I managed to save my face from hitting the ladder again before realising that I had to do something about the floor impact. Without thinking, I grabbed the side of the ladder to slow my fall and control myself. A sharp outcropping of splintered wood found my left hand and forced me to cry out in pain and let go, falling once more on my back to the floor. The slower speed seemed to prevent the sickening crack, but my spine still took the shock and sent very real pain through me.

The lit torch lay next to me as I examined my bloody hand. Not bothering to check my surroundings, I gave my aching back some time to recover by carefully pulling out the dozen or so small splinters around the large wound on the palm of my hand. It was hard work in the flickering torchlight and made me wince dramatically with every pull. Once I had removed as many as I could see, though I could definitely feel more, I wrapped my hand in a makeshift bandage I tore off from one of the sheets in my bag in preparation to move on. The blood quickly seeped through the clean white cloth, but the dressing would do for now.

Immediately forgetting that pressure would hurt the wounded hand, I planted it on the floor with plans to push myself up, but quickly retracted it when it sent a searing pain through me. Then, using solely my other hand, I picked myself up and had a look around, tentatively gripping the torch with my damaged hand and drawing my sword with the other.

The corridor wasn’t much different to what I had expected. It was small, dark, and oppressive, with my torchlight only reaching a few feet before me. Old stone bricks, which clearly once made up the now patchwork and water-damaged walls, lay strewn across the floor. I was surprised at the complete lack of life, however. No spider webs, moss, or anything even remotely living. Perhaps whatever was inside affected everything as much as it did normal humans.

I came to a heavy but unassuming wooden door. The vertical planks were certainly once very strong, but they were rotting and several gaps in the door had formed where sections had rotted away and broken off. Rusting iron support strips holding the door together could be seen running on the other side past the holes in the door and the hinges seemed relatively intact, but trying to twist the circular door handle revealed that it wasn’t connected to anything on the other side and so achieved little more than breaking off in my hand. Grabbing the door through one of the gaps and pulling proved fruitless as well when the decidedly stuck door didn’t budge whatsoever.

There was nothing else for it; I’d have to do something that, at the back of my mind, I’d wanted to do to a door for a long time. Kick it down. I’d imagined it in better circumstances, but the prospect was nevertheless quite exciting. The door was designed to open towards me, but I figured that a hard-enough kick could break the rotting wood without too much trouble.

I steadied myself on the slightly damp stone wall next to the door with one hand as I prepared to deliver the blow. Aiming for a potential weak spot in the wood at about knee height, I took a deep breath and raised my leg. With a loud grunt, I forced my leg forwards into the wood, my foot passing through and splintering the old door with ease. For a brief second as the chunks of wood scattered across the floor on the other side, I felt very strong and powerful. That was until the other planks above my leg, even weaker than I expected, snapped one after the other in quick succession and collapsed down onto the leg that I was frantically trying to pull out. I wasn’t quick enough and the heavy wood crushed my shin with the shock throwing me off balance and to the floor. I landed on my already damaged back and almost instinctively swore loudly.

The entire corridor seemed to shake only a second or two later. Rock dust started to fall from the ceilings as the subsidence caused more of the bricks on the walls to fall out of place. I frantically tried to pull my leg out of the collapsed door, but the weight on my damaged leg was far too much for my frantic straining. I could hear the movement of the earth around me as the ceiling cracked in several places above me. As much of the remaining wall finally gave way, the ceiling completely caved in and sent large chunks of rock down on top of me.

I forced my eyes open and found myself once again gripping onto the stone wall while readying my kick on the sudden intact door. I quickly stepped back and tried to figure out what was going on. It took me a moment to realise that I hadn’t felt any pain during the cave in, nor when I fell off the ladder for the first time.

_Those that lacked the ability to use the diamonds were unable to use the amulet without eventually losing their minds. The afflicted often claimed seeing themselves die in a number of increasingly gruesome ways._

That was what the book had said about the Amulet of Sight. It seemed hauntingly close to what was happening to me in that moment. I spent a little time debating whether to turn back or not, just in case the King had been wrong about me being able to use all of the artefacts.

This didn’t feel like I was being taunted though, it felt like I was being warned of dangers. With the ladder, I used the vision to stop myself from breaking my back. Now I knew not to kick the door in as it would lead to a complete tunnel collapse. Perhaps I was being protected rather than toyed with.

With a distinct unease from the lack of definitive answers, I moved to examine the door once more. Kicking myself that I didn’t think of this earlier, I took my sword out and slid it through the gap between the door and the wall, just below the latch that the handle was supposed to control. The latch put up a little rusted resistance as I lifted the sword up from under it, but it quickly gave way and let me completely unlock the door. The door itself required a bit of a tug to get open, but it was with relative ease compared to what I’d just gone through, or rather, what I’d thought that I’d just gone through.

The door opened into a chamber only slightly wider and no taller than that of the corridor. The understated design, likely employed to fool looters into thinking that nothing of note was kept there, continued into this final section of the structure. In the centre of the square room was a knee-high stone block, almost like a table, with nothing but the small amulet lazily placed on top. The gold chain and similarly coloured amulet itself, in a pristine condition despite the surroundings, glistened in the torchlight with each elliptical ring in the amulet kicking off its own small shadow.

As I approached, the small point in the very centre started to glow a gentle blue which only got brighter as I got closer. Nervously, I sheathed my sword and reached to grab my prize.

I stared at the amulet as I picked it up, making sure that I would notice if something strange happened. Nothing did. The blue glow remained but nothing else changed. I didn’t dare move, fully expecting some kind of _Indiana Jones_ style trap or something more supernatural, but there was no reaction from the jewellery at all. Not that I was going to stop staring at it, of course, just in case. Flipping it over and feeling the intricate engravings in the concave back sparked no reaction as well. It truly was a beautiful creation, but that only made me more nervous. Who could have created something like this? And why?

After a solid amount of examination, I finally conceded that it wasn’t going to do anything and looked away, back towards the entrance to the chamber. Except, it wasn’t there. I wasn’t underground at all.

I found myself dumbly gripping onto the amulet in the backstreets of Sarthe. The narrow cobbled road wasn’t quite wide enough for two people to stand and it was flanked on both sides by two and three storey buildings, all made of white painted stone and black painted wood, which featured overhangs over the pavement.

A bolt of bright lightning was frozen in place horizontally in front of me, going down the road. I was almost relieved; the amulet seemed to have reacted in a similar way to my first contact with the sword.

I traced the lightning in one direction to find it striking the first in a large group of disgusting zombies crammed into the narrow space. Time seemed to be frozen at the exactly time of impact, I could see the bolt hitting the first zombie’s chest and the energy, about to jump across, spreading out a couple of centimetres across.

Following the bolt to the other side, predictably, led to myself firing it from my sword. It was initially almost cool to see myself actually using the weapon, but the anger displayed on my face was awful to see. My brow furrowed over my glowing blue eyes and the hard grimace made the overall expression haunting. I didn’t like who I was becoming, it didn’t feel like I was looking at myself.

I was standing with my back to one of the inner walls, presumably heading to the main gate of the outer wall. From where I was, however, I could just about see that a portion of the outer wall had completely collapsed. The night sky all around was full of black smoke and there was a distinct orange glow behind some of the buildings. It took a moment to realise that this wasn’t from a sunrise, but from fire.

Kate, David and a few other people were all behind me and fending off various monsters and seemed mostly on top of it. Kate seemed focused on the task at hand, but David was looking up at something in my vague direction. I followed his gaze a few feet up and away from my frozen self towards my zombie victims. I couldn’t tell where it had come from, but a small cluster of between five and ten arrows were heading straight for me. I realised that David’s mouth was open as he was clearly calling to me.

I looked back towards the arrows, but I was greeted by the dark stone wall of the amulet’s home. Startled, I quickly stepped back and searched the area for the frozen scene, but only found the small chamber once more. The amulet’s central blue light had faded and it seemed dormant for the time being.

After mulling over the frozen scene that I had just witnessed and carefully examining the amulet for a minute or two, I felt that it was time to leave the oppressive chamber. Hanging the surprisingly light amulet around my neck and tucking it into my shirt, I cautiously moved through the open door and up to the old ladder. I was very tentative with the ladder, especially when navigating past the missing rung, but it just about held together enough for my ascent to the top.


	14. Memory

**Midnight, 23 rd July **

As expected, the surface was deep into the night by the time I reached the top of the ladder. It wasn’t much of a worry, I had the supplies and a near-perfect location to rest until morning. The heavy door would require some effort to open, so it made a decent blockade from the dangers of outside. Ideally, I would have gotten as far away from the worrisome chamber as possible, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Despite the surroundings, however, sleep took to me relatively easily. Finally relaxing somewhat after the stressful ordeal seemed to have done wonders.

I was forced back into consciousness by the sound of the door being loudly scraped across the stone floor as it was flung open with impatient fervour. After letting the damaged door rest on the ground once more, Kate and David peered in the opening they’d created as their eyes adjusted to the relative darkness inside.

“You’re ok!” David shouted excitedly as both of them ran in and helped my half-asleep form to my feet. “Did you get the thing? The MacGuffin of Power or whatever?”

I pulled the amulet out from under my shirt and said, “Yeah, just about.”

“Great!” Kate declared. “Do you know what it does now?”

I thought about this for a moment, still not having anything concrete. Sure, things had happened to me on my approach, but I still had to find out if that was supposed to happen or not.

Eventually, I said, “I’m not sure, but I think it can show me the future if I use it right.” I went on to explain what had happened to me and my theories about it potentially protecting me from danger. They were understandably sceptical but seemed to at least humour me. During the exhaustive explanation, they noticed my wounded hand and quickly made sure that everything was ok. From what I’d been through over the month or so that I’d been on the island, I was sure that it would heal fairly quickly.

After deciding that we should figure everything out once we were back in the relative safety of the city, we set off in the direction that we came from originally. The hope was that since we actually knew where we were going, it would take less time to get back.

Despite the powers that I was messing with, the amulet was strangely exciting. I was always like this with new things though. Even if I’d just bought a new pen or something equally boring, I’d take every opportunity to use it just because it was new. I had that same feeling but amplified because of how abstract and interesting the amulet was.

“So, you felt what it was like to die?” David asked delicately after a period of silence on our journey.

“Not exactly,” I replied uncertainly. “I saw what happened, but I didn’t feel anything. I went through it all as if I was watching a first-person movie, but not quite that because I did feel in control.” I thought for a moment. “I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“Does that mean that you had no idea if you were actually living your life or not?” Kate asked. “You only realised that you were being shown the future after the fact?”

“Yeah, exactly that. If this thing works the same consistently, maybe one day I’ll be able to tell the difference, but I certainly couldn’t then.”

We had an uneventful first day and night of travelling. Being confident in our ability to retrace our steps, we trusted that we were making good progress. It wasn’t until our second night of skirting around monsters and taking shelter in a nearby cave that we realised that we didn’t recognise anything. Perhaps stupidly, we didn’t appreciate how similar the forest would look across the Dene, especially as the valley widened towards its exit. Panicked, we were forced to spend a third night in the hostile wilderness.

As dark clouds started to loom overhead around midday of the third day, we finally reached the edge of the forest but still didn’t recognise anything; we didn’t see the city at all. The expanse of green grass before us was disheartening, we were officially lost. The only point of interest in sight was a single storey stone and timber farmhouse about half a mile away. The owners couldn’t have been very wealthy; the distinct lack of glass in the windows, the thatched roof in dire need of repair, and the rotting wooden frame showed us that much.

Four cows lazily ate grass in a small pen next to it, surrounded by a collapsing wooden fence; the cows must have stayed there out of habit alone since their enclosure certainly wasn’t stopping them. There was also a clear attempt to grow crops in a large area of land nearby, but they hadn’t been successful as everything inside had been trampled or scattered across the once cultivated ground and was now either dead or dying.

A modest but deep ditch encircled the house with only one small wooden bridge across it at the dwelling’s front. Feeling like tourists once more, we uneasily approached the farmhouse’s ramshackle wooden door intent on asking for directions to Sarthe. Considering I was now the one most likely to survive a certain death scenario, though it was absolutely no guarantee, I went first to the door.

Kate and David stood close behind me as I knocked on the door, worried that I would break the old wood, and called, “Hello? Is anyone in? We’re looking for-”

I was cut off by the door’s squeal as it swung open. A tall but rough and dishevelled man in his forties stared me down from inside. His greying long hair and beard were fairly dirty and his tough but somewhat threadbare clothing clearly didn’t get much attention. It was hard to make anything out in the dark room behind him as was lit only by the natural light coming in through the small glassless windows.

With a deep voice that seemed most like a cross between a Gloucester and Worcestershire accent, he sharply demanded, “What does you want?”

Sensing the immediate hostility, I stepped back a little and nervously said, “We were just hoping that-”

“We ‘aven’t got any more to give,” he interrupted before taking a deep breath. “Go back an’ tell ‘is Majesty that he’s bled us dry, he has.”

Confused, I stuttered and responded, “I don’t follow.”

A similarly aged woman in an equally tattered state peered around the corner from behind the man. “They don’t look like Harold’s men, dear,” she said as she examined our clothes. Rain started to sprinkle down on us from the dark clouds above.

The man hummed sceptically as he too noticed our outfits. “If yer not on Harold’s business, ‘oo are ye and why are ye here?”

“We’re lost out here and were wondering if you could tell us how to get back to Sarthe,” I awkwardly replied.

“What did the King do to you?” Kate interjected.

The man sighed again as he mentally debated going through his story. “We only ‘ad permission to rear cattle on this land. Like a fool, I thought that we should grow crops too. It’s not like they’re using the land, is et?” He indicated to the grass plains in the open area. “Well, His Majesty found and…” he pointed to the ruined field just outside the encircling ditch. “… That’s what ‘appened. They’ve been cripplin’ us fer weeks now. No one’s come in a while, so I thought that you three were ‘is men.”

Initially taken aback by the story, I realised that he didn’t know of the King’s death. “I might be able to offer a reason for that,” I eventually said. Both leaned in and listened intently. “The King’s dead,” I said bluntly.

Their eyes widened. “So, his daughter’s on throne now?” The woman asked. “What’s ‘er name? Edith? No… Mary!”

I nodded. “We’re kind of friends of hers. If you can tell us where Sarthe is, we might be able to make sure that you can farm here. Maybe even return your money.”

The pair entered a deep thought. The silence lasted for half a minute or so before we heard more movement from inside. The woman suddenly snapped out of her thought trance to look at the source with worry. She tried to subtly shake her head to stop whoever it was from showing themselves, but she was fairly obvious about it.

“That’s not…” A strangely familiar voice came from the source. “That’s not Mark, is it?” A head nervously peered around the door. Despite the dirty and slightly grown out hair as well as the beginnings of a patchy beard, I recognised the figure instantly.

“Sam!” I called out, completely eschewing decorum.

He did the same as he lightly pushed the pair out of the way to run up to me and wrap his arms around me in a forceful hug. We heavily patted each other’s backs before he moved over to David to do the same.

He noticed Kate standing beside David and, returning back to his normal self, stretched his hand towards her for a reserved handshake. “Sam,” he said quickly.

“So _you’re_ Sam,” she responded. “Good to finally meet you. I’m Kate.”

Finished with the introductions for now, Sam turned back to the man and woman and excitedly explained, “Mark and David are two of the people that I came here with, the ones I told you about!”

In an instant, recognition washed over their previously confused faces. Sam explained to us that the couple had found him a week after he’d washed up on the island. Before the King had found out about their illegal farming, they figured that they’d have enough money and food to be able to look after his injured self. Despite the struggles, they kept at it and helped him recover to the point where he was basically ok again.

“We’re glad to ‘ave helped,” the man said as Sam wrapped up his story and the rain started to get heavier. “We can tell ye how to get back to city. You’ll want to go now though, ‘fore the beasts use this weather to roam.”

“Thank you so much,” I replied, still slightly dumbstruck at Sam’s sudden appearance. “We’ll tell the Queen how much you’ve helped. She’ll definitely return the favour.”

“If nothing else, please just stop them coming back,” the woman replied.

We agreed and vowed to do more than that before they showed us the way back to Sarthe and, on our exit, removed the bridge across the encircling ditch.

The city wasn’t too far away as it turned out, only a little more than a few hours’ walk. Despite the increasingly horrid weather, we welcomed this time to catch up with Sam.

“So, let me get this straight,” Sam began during our conversation. “You three are in with the Queen of this place?” We all nodded to confirm. “How?”

“That’s a long story,” Kate quite accurately commented. Over the course of the rest of the journey, we explained everything that had happened to us. He was understandably baffled by the magic items that I’d gained, but he seemed to at least humour us for the time being.

“I can’t believe that I’ve been hiding away feeling sorry for myself while you guys have been doing all of this,” Sam said, reflecting on our wildly different experiences.

I chuckled a little and said, “I’m not sure which I’d prefer.” During the subsequent brief silence, my thoughts drifted to Tom, the last of our group still at large. “I wonder how Tom’s getting on,” I idly commented, not expecting much of an answer.

Sam reached his hand out towards me and stopped us. “What do you mean?” He looked me in the eyes and spoke with worrying seriousness.

Confused, I slowly said, “I just hope that he’s doing ok.”

“You don’t remember?” He quickly said.

“Remember what?” David said, stepping forward.

“Oh fuck,” Sam exhaled, slumping his shoulders and looking away briefly. David and I, surprised at the expletive as Sam rarely swore, urged him to explain what was going on. “You seriously remember nothing about the storm?”

I shook my head. “What storm?”

“On the yacht!” He quickly exclaimed. “You were _that_ drunk?!” Sam looked around us and noted our open and relatively dark surroundings. “I shouldn’t explain everything now, it’s not safe. But Tom…” He paused as he struggled to get his words out. “Tom didn’t make it.”

I was stunned. That was impossible. “You what?”

“He’s bloody dead,” Sam reiterated in a reluctant exhale.

David’s face lost all of its colour and he seemed unable to form words. I felt the same. Tom couldn’t be dead, it wasn’t possible. Sam must’ve been jumping to conclusions somehow.

“I’m really sorry to do this now,” Kate said as she stepped forwards, “But Sam’s right. We should move, we’re not safe here.”

. . .

We moved quickly to the city out of fear that the monsters would start to use the rain as an opportunity to spread across the plains. None of us uttered even a single word. I didn’t believe that Tom could actually be dead. He’d been with me for most of my life so I couldn’t imagine a world without him.

We approached the city’s front gate and noted the familiar front to the Dene that we had completely missed on our way back. In the gloomy colours of the day, I noticed a soft blue light coming from beneath my shirt. I pulled the amulet out from under it and found that its centre was lit up once more. I had no idea what this meant and stopped everyone to show them it.

The other three shrieked as I felt myself being pushed back by a sudden impact. I collapsed to the floor but had absolutely no idea what had happened. Once I’d hit the floor, I noticed a wooden stick jutting out of the leather on my chest. Only when I saw the fletching at the end did I realise that I’d been struck by an arrow that had pierced straight through my armour. Why didn’t it hurt though? The other three were definitely concerned and scared, but I was just confused.

I was suddenly upright again and moving towards the front gate once more. After stumbling a little from the surprise, I looked at my amulet and found that it wasn’t glowing anymore. It finally dawned on me what had just happened.

“Get down!” I shouted as I jumped to the floor. The other three, surprised by my sudden exclamation, ducked down a little and feverishly scanned our surroundings. The arrow, once destined for my body, whipped overhead and struck the floor behind me.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” David shouted instinctually.

We scanned for any semblance of cover in the area but came up short. The rain made it hard to see the skeleton that we presumed had sent it. That was until we heard a loud but clearly embarrassed, “Sorry!” from the city wall. “You can come closer! We won’t shoot!”

We relaxed ever-so-slightly and approached the front gate.

“How did you see that coming?” Sam asked, sounding impressed.

“You know what I said about my time with this amulet?” I said, showing him the neckwear. He nodded sceptically. “It seems to glow if it’s going to show me the future. That arrow hit me, but then I was taken back to just before it had and I ducked out of its way.”

“This is so bloody weird,” he replied.

“You’re telling me.”

The wall’s grand gates opened as we approached and closed behind us once we were through.

One of the four guards posted to the inside of the gate gruffly greeted us by saying, “Sorry about that misunderstanding. The monsters seem to be testing the defences at the moment and the rain has the men on the walls on edge.”

“At least they missed,” I replied, hoping to come across as passive aggressive as possible; I wasn’t sure why, it just felt like the right way to react at the stressful time. When the guard didn’t pick up on this, instead nodding in agreement, I added, “Would have thought that it wouldn’t be too hard to spot that we’re human, but whatever.”

Perhaps anticipating the line of questioning, the guard quickly responded, “The rain makes their job much harder than otherwise. And the monsters coming to the walls at night have been arriving in groups of three or four, just like you.”

He made good points, but I didn’t want to back down. I just defensively said, “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

The guard sighed and reluctantly said, “Yes, we will.” He examined me and the rest of the group before saying, “I presume, from your… interesting outfits, that you are Master Harding and his party back from the Dene?” We all nodded in confirmation. “Good. I believe Her Majesty will want to see you in the castle.” He pointed us up the muddy road through the city and towards the castle as if we couldn’t see the structure towering over the landscape, presumably as a way to get rid of us.

We trudged up to the castle and, after a brief argument with one of the castle’s guards to let Sam through, reluctantly found our audience with the Queen. I desperately wanted to talk about Tom, but we had to explain our success to Mary first.

We found her in the study once more. She had covered the central table in variously aged books and loose lengths of paper. Her sat down and hunched over form was so engrossed in reading that she didn’t notice us enter until Sam closed the heavy doors behind us. Her head jolted up in surprise and revealed her tired and world-weary face.

“Oh thank the Heavens!” She exclaimed, pushing herself up from her chair. “You came back!” Her tone showed her vehement excitement, perfectly opposing my feelings at the time. “Does that mean that you have it?” She moved over to me as I pulled the amulet out from under my shirt and nodded. Being careful not to touch it, despite her excitement, she closely examined the neckwear. “It’s beautiful,” she stated, lost in wonder. “Do you know what it does yet?”

I sighed and reluctantly explained, “It warns me if I’m in mortal danger, basically.”

“That’s incredible!” She waited for me to show the same enthusiasm. When I didn’t, she said, “You don’t seem very interested in it.”

“I’m sorry, can we go through this another time?” I struggled to form the words that I wanted to say and so spoke slowly and carefully. “I’ll leave the sword and the amulet here in the castle, but we’re going to need some time apart from all of this.”

She was definitely confused. She glanced across the other faces of my friends to gauge their feelings before locking onto Sam’s. “Who are you?” She asked bluntly.

Sam, who had been silent for quite some time now as he took in all of the details of the castle’s interior, hurriedly stepped forward and gave a small bow. “Sam Ashton, your Majesty.” He glanced towards me for confirmation that he’d said the right thing.

I quickly nodded and explained, “He’s one of the friends that I came here with. We found him outside the city.”

“I see…” She said in vague understanding, before returning her attention to me. “You can obviously take time to do… whatever it is you have to do. But do remember that time is of the essence. I’ve been going through everything we have about the three objects and I’d like to talk to you about my findings.” I simply nodded, hoping to convey that I would do that without actually saying words.

We left the Queen soon after. Kate shared a few private words with Mary herself as we were taken to the artefacts’ chamber within the castle to safely store our equipment away, including the sword and amulet. We soon met up again and Kate told us that she had informed Mary of the situation and had therefore been given a bag of gold coins to spend on a few drinks at the Glistering Melon inn, seemingly a favourite spot of the Queen’s. I had to wonder whether Mary had been there herself or not, perhaps sneaking out of the castle to experience life as normal person.

Putting the bag with Sybilla behind the bar and giving her strict instructions to keep the drinks coming, we sat at the cleanest table in the mostly empty inn. Only a couple of the ten tables were taken and contained two quiet groups of men that had clearly had a hard day. We were assured that the tables would fill out soon however.

Once we were settled with our distinctly average ale, I looked to Sam opposite me and finally asked, “How did it happen?”

He thought through his words for a moment before beginning with, “We were all properly drunk. The music was really loud, playing some of David’s rubbish I think.” I glanced over to David, expecting some sort of a retort, but the life had been sucked out of him. He simply listened to the insult with intent. “Clouds quickly covered the sky. Do you remember that night? Clear as anything, but there were suddenly clouds everywhere. Rain quickly followed the clouds and soon we could barely see a few feet in front of us. You guys didn’t seem to care though, I just remember a lot of dumb jokes about being wet.

“The boat started to rock and move even though we’d anchored it. Then there was this thunder, this crazy loud thunder. I sobered up pretty fast when that started to happen, but you guys seemed to enjoy it all, as if it was some sort of adventure. The waves were huge, I swear the boat felt almost vertical at some points.

“During one of these massive waves, Tom, at the front of the boat, was swept off his feet by the water. He fell backwards and smashed his head on the floor. I rushed over to him, but I really had trouble fighting the storm. He managed to pull himself up, but his head was bleeding a lot.” Sam coughed and sniffed as he struggled to continue to relive this moment. “I’d lost track of you two, but I tried to call out the rock ahead. The rain and thunder was so loud though, it was useless. I held onto a railing when we hit it but Tom…” Sam took a drink and I caught his eyes welling up with tears. “Tom was thrown off the deck. The rocks were so jagged, I saw them go straight through his body like it was nothing.

“The boat eventually capsized and I guess we were all thrown off more safely.” He paused, thinking over the whole story. “I think he died quickly, but I don’t know. At least he had beer armour, I guess.”

No one said anything for a while. I couldn’t be sure how long, but it felt like hours. It likely wasn’t that long, but the time in which everyone wanted to say something but no one knew what to say never seemed to end.

Eventually, David raised his tankard and pushed it towards the centre of the table. “Here’s to the king of the motherfucking world.”

The rest of us raised our drinks as well, putting them together and taking a large drink each. We started to share stories about Tom. Sam, David and I had all heard them before, but it was enjoyable to reminisce. We knew he would have liked it. We felt that there was nothing more Tom than getting drunk in a pub and sharing stupid stories. Shooting the shit, as he would have called it.

As the night wore on and we became more drunk and loud, the inn filled out. We noticed a few people try to eavesdrop, perhaps debating whether we were having an interesting enough conversation to join in with but, when they heard our dialect, they likely decided that we weren’t worth the hassle. Despite not knowing Tom, Kate listened diligently and joined in where she could.

The evening started to quiet down. A significant portion of the people had left the inn and we’d started to run out of stories about Tom.

Sam looked at me and, with a tone of getting real with me, asked, “Can I ask what your plan with this bad guy is?”

David and Kate looked at me expectantly as well. Having not thought about this as much as I should have, I replied, “There isn’t one, really. We’d gotten as far as saying that the amulet will help in some way. I’m kind of hoping that Mary has come up with something.”

“You just need to fuck that twat right in his dickhole,” said David enthusiastically, slurring each word to the point where I had to spend a few seconds to decipher the sentence.

I sniggered at him. “You’re so far gone, mate.”

“No!” David sat forward and yelled much too loudly for the relatively quiet inn and accompanied it with an embarrassingly wild hand swing, almost knocking over all of the tankards on the table. “He’s a wanker! He brought us here! He killed Tom!”

“Alright! Give it a rest,” I quickly interrupted, trying to calm him. “Settle down, we don’t want to get kicked out.”

He slumped back into his chair and just morosely said, “Whatever.”

Trying to divert attention away from him, Sam turned to me again and said, “I’m sure you’ll come up with something. You seem to know what you’re doing.”

Before I could respond, I was shocked by Sybilla’s hand touching my shoulder. “Is ‘e alright?” She asked, nodding towards David.

“He’ll be fine in the morning,” I answered, trying to save us the embarrassment of getting us kicked out. “We should probably get him back soon though.”

“All the way up t’the castle?” She questioned in surprise. “I thought you lot was staying ‘ere with the money you gave me. Got two rooms and four beds with yer names on ‘em, I have.”

I looked around the rest of the group and shrugged, silently asking their opinions. Kate and Sam gave noncommital gestures indicating that they didn’t really care where they stayed, whereas David looked like he was about to fall asleep right there.

Looking back up to Sybilla, I said, “Yeah we’ll stay here tonight, thanks.”

“Wunderful!” She instantly replied, bringing her thick accent out in full force. “D’you need any help getting him upstairs?”

“I’ve got him,” Sam said, beginning to get up, “I’m going to bugger off as well I think. Can’t wait to sleep in a real bed.”

“Fair play,” I said. “It’s good to have you back, mate.”

Sybilla showed Sam where his and David’s twin room was before getting Kate and I another round. I thought about what Sam had asked me. I really had no plan for fighting Edward. Where would he be? Would we find him or wait for him to find us? Would it just be me or would I have my friends and the city behind me? My entire time on the island had been chasing one goal after another without thinking of how it would culminate at the end. I just wanted to go home and this was all just shit in the way.

Apparently sensing my feelings, Kate asked, “What’s up?”

I let out a weary sigh and replied, “Everyone seems to expect me to know what to do, but I’m just going along with things at the moment. It’s just been completing one task after another and hoping that everything will suddenly get easier. I’m not good at any of this stuff. I’m not particularly strong nor open minded about magical bullshit, and I’ve not even got any history knowledge to help me out. I just don’t think I can fight him. I don’t have any sort of a plan or strategy for when the time comes. I don’t even know when the ‘time’ is or how to get to it. Is he even going to attack? It’s all so bloody up in the air and I can’t stand it.” I took in a few deep breaths after my rant, eventually exhaling loudly. “I can’t do this anymore.”

“I don’t think you have much of a choice, I’m afraid,” Kate said after a moment of thought. “It sounds like the Queen has something to say about it though; we’ll come up with something.”

“And what if we don’t?” I quickly responded.

“Then we can at least prepare. It’s better to prepare and for him to not attack than otherwise.”

I sighed. “I guess you’re right. Surely someone around here has a boat though? We could nick it and get the fuck away from here. Edward would never know that I was still alive and so wouldn’t attack the city, and we’d be on our way home.”

“If he was actually the one that caused the storm on your yacht, it seems like he would just indiscriminately attack any boats in the area,” she said with strange certainty. I let out an unsatisfied hum, to which she responded, “But whatever we do, I’ll be with you. You have nothing to worry about, I’ve got your back.”

“Thanks, I guess I’m just a bit more melancholy today.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to Tom. We’ll make Edward pay for all of this.”

I stayed with that sentiment for a moment. “I’m not sure that that’s what I even want.” Kate raised an eyebrow to this, so I clarified, “Don’t get me wrong, that arsehole deserves to be ‘fucked in his dickhole’. But it won’t bring Tom back, and I’m not sure that I can even go through with killing someone. I’ll probably feel differently when I see that smug fucking face again though.”


End file.
